Help for the Haunted(54)

Rose reached the Datsun, but kept walking, crossing the street into that park. I hesitated before following her until we came to a stop by those broken swings. She slipped a hand into her sock and pulled out a lighter and a cigarette. I watched as she brought the cigarette to her lips and lit up, inhaling deeply before exhaling into the night air. Against the backdrop of that dreary, moonlit park, she looked mature and sophisticated—someone who had already been to those faraway places on that globe.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Yeah, well, like I told you in the car before, there’s a lot you don’t know about me. Just don’t say anything to Mom and Dad.”

“I won’t. But I’m surprised you risk it, seeing as you never fight with them anymore.”

“Oh, we still fight, Sylvie. But it’s more of a cold war these days. You know, like that paper you’re writing.”

“What do you fight about?”

Rose took another drag, her gaze fixed on the apartment, where the streetlight illuminated the stairs leading to that door at the top. “Don’t worry about it.”

Inching that close to a topic only to back off put me in mind of another time she’d done the same. “Can I ask you something?”

“Can I stop you?”

“You could, actually. If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

“No. Might as well go ahead. Apparently, we’ve got hours to spare while they do God knows what, leaving their children out here in this creepy park in the dark.”

“They told us to wait in the car, not the park.”

“Keep defending them, Sylvie, and I won’t answer your question. Now what is it you want to know?”

I pushed one of those dangling chains. “Remember that ride at Disney? The Haunted Mansion?”

Rose blew a cloud of smoke between us. “What about it?”

“When we passed those mirrors—the trick ones that made it look like a ghost was seated between us—you told me Howie said something about Dad and Mom. Something that would make it so I no longer believed them. What did he tell you?”

Rose was quiet for a minute, staring at the apartment door. Then she said, “I don’t remember, Sylvie. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was a bunch of BS. Our uncle is a drunk and liar, just like Dad always says. So I’m doing my best to stay out of it. You’d be smart to do the same. Just write your papers and win your prizes. Let everyone tell you what a perfect angel you are. Must be nice living in the Sylvie Bubble.”

“I don’t live in a bubble,” I protested. I hated when she held my good behavior and grades against me.

Rose let out a laugh. “You have no idea.” She stubbed out her cigarette and pointed across the street. “Look.”

I turned to see the door opening at the top of those stairs. My father stepped out onto the deck, carrying his bag of equipment. Next, my mother emerged. And that’s when I saw her: the reason we were returning to Maryland that very night held tightly in my mother’s arms. My father led the way, and my mother moved slowly down each step, careful not to trip and drop her.

“I don’t understand,” I said to Rose.

Beside me, my sister slid her lighter back into her sock. She pulled a stick of gum from nowhere and popped it in her mouth. “Me neither. But we better get over there.”

The two of us walked so quickly across the street that we arrived at the car before them. Rose knew enough to pop the trunk for my father so he could put his equipment inside. He did just that, then took the keys from my sister and went to the passenger door, opening it for my mother. As she came closer, I heard her humming that familiar tune. Every bit as slowly, she lowered herself into the front seat before my father shut the door and went around to the driver’s side. Rose and I climbed in the back. She moved my bulky HISTORY book out of the way, but it slipped from her hands and fell open on the seat. In the dim light, my sister glanced down at a page I’d folded over and bookmarked with a scrap of paper. On that paper, I’d scratched a simple list meant for nobody’s eyes but my own:

Marie des Vallées, 14

Bernadette, 14

Rose Mason (Mom), 14

Rose glanced at that list then at the contents of the page, before closing the book and handing it to me. “You too, huh? I thought you were smarter than that, Sylvie.”

“Smarter than what?” my father asked, starting the engine.

“Nothing,” Rose and I answered at the same time.

He didn’t push further. Rather, he leaned over and helped my mother buckle her seat belt, a difficult task considering the passenger she held so tightly in her arms. Once they were settled in, my mother positioned herself in such a way that the strange face, one I’d seen before but never quite like this, was leaning over her shoulder, gazing directly at me. As my father pulled the Datsun away from the curb, I could not help but stare at her dark eyes, her mess of hair. All day long, I’d been wrong about the reasons for that wary, unsettled feeling.

I had to wait until we reached the highway east before my father began his explanation, sharing with us the sort of story that might have been torn from the pages of my oversized book. What made it more real, however, was that the biggest part of the story was traveling along with us in that car.

“Her name is Penny,” my father began. “And for a lot of complicated reasons, the family who owned her cannot keep her anymore. Now she belongs to us . . .”