The Vanishing Half(59)
Now she glanced at him through the mirror, Blake watching her with those soft, worried eyes. She’d created a new life with a man who could never know her, but how could she walk away from it now? It was the only life she had left.
* * *
—
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, she leaned against Blake’s chest, watching their daughter squeal and dive into her pile of gifts. A Talking Barbie that spoke when you pulled her cord, a Suzy Homemaker oven set, a red Spyder bicycle. Look at this, look at that, she must have been such a good girl this year! Unlike all those rotten poor children staring at empty trees who must have deserved it, bad because they were poor, poor because they were bad. She’d never wanted to participate in the Santa mythmaking, but Blake said that it was important to preserve Kennedy’s innocence.
“It’s just a little story,” he said. “It’s not like she’ll hate us when she figures it out.”
He couldn’t even bring himself to say the word lie. Which was a lie in itself.
Scraps of wrapping paper littered the carpet, Kennedy collapsing in a blissful haze. Stella opened each of Blake’s boxes to reveal another gift she hadn’t asked for: a floor-length mink coat, a diamond tennis bracelet, an emerald necklace he fastened as they stood together in front of the bedroom mirror.
“It’s too much,” she whispered, fingering the gem.
“Nothing is too much for you, my sweet,” he said.
She was one of the lucky ones. A husband who adored her, a happy daughter, a beautiful home. How could she complain about any of it? Who was she to want more, when she’d already taken so much? She would have to stop playing these foolish games with Loretta Walker. Stop pretending the two had anything in common, that they existed in the same universe. That they could ever be friends. She would have to tell Loretta that she couldn’t visit her anymore.
In the kitchen, she mashed potatoes until her arms burned. She slid pineapple wedges into the folds of the ham and pushed it into the oven. Blake, watching the Lakers wallop the Suns, told her that Kennedy had gone outside to play with the other neighborhood kids. But when she stepped out, she didn’t see the Pearson boys racing bicycles past or the Johansen girls tugging their wagons or anyone tossing a football. No children at all, their cul-de-sac empty except for Kennedy and Cindy on the Walkers’ lawn, both girls crying. Loretta kneeling between them—frazzled, still in her apron. Stella ran across the street, grabbed her daughter, searched her skin for cuts and scrapes. But she didn’t find any, so she pulled Kennedy in for a hug instead.
“What’s the matter?” she asked Loretta. “Did something happen?”
A fight over a new toy, maybe. Talking Barbie was lying in the dirt between them. But Loretta stood, grabbing her daughter’s hand.
“You should know,” she said.
Her voice was strangely cold. Maybe she had heard the music from the party last night, maybe she was still sore about not being invited. Stella stroked her daughter’s hair.
“You have to share, honey,” she said. “What did Mommy tell you about that? I’m sorry, Loretta, she’s an only child, you know—”
“Oh, she shared plenty,” Loretta said. “Keep her away from my girl.”
“What?” Now Stella stood, gripping Kennedy’s shoulder protectively. “What’re you talking about?”
“You know what she said to Cindy? Well, the girls were playing some game and Kennedy was losing so she said, ‘I don’t want to play with a nigger.’”
Her stomach sank.
“Loretta, I—”
“No, I understand,” Loretta said. “I don’t blame her. It all comes from the home, see. And like a fool, I let you into mine. The loneliest goddamn woman in this whole neighborhood. I should’ve known. You stay away from me.”
Loretta quivered, powerless in her anger and all the angrier for it. Stella felt numb. She guided her daughter back across the street. As soon as she shut the door, she grabbed Kennedy and slapped her. The girl yelped.
“What’d I do?” she asked, crying again.
Behind her, the crowd on the television roared, Blake cheering along. Stella stared into her daughter’s face, seeing everyone that she had ever hated, then she was looking at her daughter again, gazing at her with watery eyes, a hand covering her reddened cheek. Stella fell to her knees, pulling her daughter close, kissing her damp face.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. Mommy’s sorry.”
* * *
—
YEARS LATER, Stella would only remember speaking to Reg Walker three times: One morning when she stepped out to collect the newspaper as he was leaving for the set, and he paused on the driveway and said, “Lovely day, ain’t it?” She agreed that it was, watched him climb into his sleek black car. The second time, when he came home to find her sitting on the couch with his wife and paused a little in the doorway, as if he’d walked into the wrong house. “Hi there,” he’d said, suddenly shy, and Loretta laughed, reaching for her glass of wine. “Sit with us awhile, baby,” Loretta said. He didn’t, but before he left, he leaned over to light her cigarette, their eyes meeting in a glance that felt so intimate, Stella looked away. And the third time, when Reg helped Stella unload her groceries. She should’ve recoiled as he came near but she let him carry her bags inside, the walk from the driveway to the kitchen counter feeling unnaturally long. Even Loretta hadn’t been inside her home before. She walked with him down the lonely, sterile hallways, where he set the bags on the counter.