The Silent Sister(54)

The boxes from the estate sale were stacked in one corner of the back room, and she was happy to see the one she wanted was on top. She opened it and pulled out album after album, finally finding the prize. The black cover with its two porcelain statues was a little faded from being tucked between other albums for a few decades, but she pulled the record from the sleeve and held it up for a better look. Pristine. Probably worth a hundred bucks. She carried the album back to the man, who’d found three others that he wanted. He took it from her with tears in his eyes and tried to press a twenty-dollar bill into her hand, but she shook her head.

“I’m just excited we had it for you,” she said. She really was. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so happy.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

She almost slipped. In the eight and a half months she’d lived in Ocean Beach, she hadn’t slipped once, but he’d touched that part of her that was still so connected to Lisa. “Jade,” she said.

“Oh, what a beautiful name. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I can’t thank you enough. I’m Charlie, by the way.”

“Glad to meet you, Charlie.”

She stepped behind the counter to slip a note to Grady. Worth $100, it read, though she hoped he wouldn’t charge that much. Grady looked at her note, then at Charlie’s glistening eyes. “Ten for this one,” he said, touching the album. “Five for each of the others.”

Charlie paid, thanked her again, and left. When she returned to the rock albums, still smiling to herself, she felt Grady’s gaze on her.

“You’re spooky,” he said after a minute.

“Spooky?”

“Just … that was amazing.”

She shrugged like it had been nothing, and moved Neil Young out of the Bs and into the Ys.

“How come you’re not in school?” Grady asked.

“What?” She looked up quickly, panicked by his question. What was he asking? “I graduated in ’89,” she said. Another one of her many lies. She’d barely started her senior year when everything fell apart.

“I mean college,” he said. “You’re smart. You’re not a stoner. You don’t seem broke. Why aren’t you in school?”

“Oh,” she said. “I wanted some time off after high school.”

“You planning to go?”

“Eventually.”

“Do you know you can have in-state tuition at San Diego State after you’ve lived here a year? It’s superaffordable.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said, running her fingers thoughtfully over the tops of the albums. She hadn’t thought about being able to go to college since her escape. Her life had been all about surviving. Pretending. Lying. She hadn’t thought about actually living the rest of it. But a state school? After coming a hairsbreadth away from Juilliard? She felt like a snob for thinking that way. She’d been cut down to size pretty quickly.

She knew Grady’d graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in business and then opened the record store. “Are you glad you went?” she asked. “I mean, you’re not exactly using your degree here.”

He laughed. “Oh, I use it and it’s good to have. And college was a blast. You need to have some fun, Jade. You’re very serious, you know?”

She could hardly disagree. “I know,” she said.

“I don’t know what you went through with your family and everything that you needed to get away from, but I can tell it took a toll,” he said. It was the first time he’d talked to her about anything personal and he must have seen her discomfort. “Sorry to get in your business,” he said, “but I like you. I don’t want to lose you as an employee, but I think you need to go to school and cut loose. You could still work here part-time.”

“I’ve only lived in California eight months,” she said. “But I’ll think about it.”

“What would you major in?” He was looking down at the CDs on the counter, marking them with pricing stickers and acting like her answer didn’t matter, which made her wonder if it was a trick question. If she said music, would he somehow guess who she was? And of course, she couldn’t major in music, but she’d never considered anything else. “I have no idea,” she said.

“You’d make a great teacher, I think.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said again, wondering how you went about taking the GED test, since she had no high school diploma. She’d need to retake her SATs, a thought which made her groan to herself. But then she pictured herself in the front of a classroom of little kids. Kids like Danny and Riley. She might like that, she thought, and for the first time since leaving home, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could have a future.





24.

Riley

“Good morning!” Jeannie said as she and Christine walked into the kitchen, accompanied by their usual explosion of energy. I’d hoped to be out of the house by the time they arrived, but no such luck. Instead, I was standing next to the counter eating a bowl of granola, and I nodded to them, my mouth full.

“I finally have some comps for the RV park to show you.” Jeannie held her laptop in the air, then seemed to notice I was eating. “Come in the living room when you finish and we’ll go over them,” she said.