The Vanishing Half(95)

Again, Stella paused.

“Mr. Sanders,” she finally said.

In spite of everything, Desiree laughed. She laughed harder than she had in weeks, years even, laughed until Stella, laughing too, snatched the bottle out of her hands before she knocked it over.

“Mr. Sanders?” she said. “That ol’ boss of yours? You ran off with him? Farrah said—”

“Farrah Thibodeaux! I haven’t thought about her in years.”

“She said she seen you with a man—”

“What ever happened to her?”

“I don’t know. This was years ago—she married some alderman—”

“A politician’s wife!”

“Can you believe it?”

The twins, laughing, talking over each other again, churning their way through that bottle. Desiree, looking out for their mother, the way she’d done when they were teenagers smoking on the porch. She was a little drunk by now. She didn’t even know how late it was.

“How’d you do it?” she said. “All those years.”

“I had to keep going,” Stella said. “You can’t turn back when you have a family. When you have people that depend on you.”

“You had a family,” Desiree said.

“Oh, that’s not what I mean,” Stella said, looking away. “It’s different with a child. You know that.”

But what was different, exactly? A sister easier to shed than a daughter, a mother than a husband. What made her so easy to give away? But she didn’t ask this, of course. She would have felt even more like a child than she already did, glancing over her shoulder to make sure her mother didn’t catch her drinking.

“So it’s you and Mr. Sanders—”

“Blake.”

“You and Blake and—”

“We have a daughter,” Stella said. “Kennedy.”

Desiree tried to imagine her. For some reason, she could only envision a proper little white girl posed on a piano bench, her hands folded on her lap just so.

“So what’s she like?” Desiree said. “Your girl.”

“Willful. Charming. She’s an actor.”

“An actor!”

“She does little plays in New York. Not Broadway or anything.”

“Still,” Desiree said. “An actor. Maybe you can bring her next time.”

She knew she’d said the wrong thing when Stella glanced away. A tiny look, but one that Desiree could still read. When their eyes met again, Stella’s were full of tears.

“You know I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Your daughter—”

“What about her?”

“She found me, Desiree. In Los Angeles. That’s why I’m here.”

Desiree scoffed. How could Jude have found Stella? Her daughter, a college student, stumbling upon her in a city as large as Los Angeles. And even if she had, somehow, found Stella, her daughter would have told her. She never would’ve kept a secret like that from her.

“She didn’t tell you,” Stella said. “I don’t blame her. I was awful. I didn’t mean to be—I was scared, some girl showing up out of nowhere, saying she knows me. She looks nothing like you, you know that. What was I supposed to think? But she found my daughter. Told her all about me, about Mallard. Then she pops up again in New York—”

Desiree pushed off the porch step. She had to call Jude. She didn’t care that it was late, that she was tipsy, that Stella was miraculously sitting on her front porch. But Stella grabbed her wrist.

“Desiree, please,” she said. “Just listen to me. Just be reasonable—”

“I been reasonable!”

“She’ll never stop! Your girl will keep trying to tell mine the truth and it’s too late for all that now. Can’t you see that?”

“Oh sure, it’s the end of the world. Your girl finding out she ain’t so lily white—”

“That I lied to her,” Stella said. “She’ll never forgive me. You don’t understand, Desiree. You’re a good mother, I can see that. Your girl loves you. That’s why she didn’t tell you about me. But I haven’t been a good one. I spent so long hiding—”

“Because you chose to! You wanted to!”

“I know,” Stella said. “I know but please. Please, Desiree. Don’t take her away from me.”

She bent over, crying into her hands, and exhausted, Desiree returned to the step beside her. She wrapped an arm around Stella’s shoulders, staring at the nape of her neck, pretending not to see the gray hair threading through the black. She’d always felt like the older sister, even though she only was by a matter of minutes. But maybe in those seven minutes they’d first been apart, they’d each lived a lifetime, setting out on their separate paths. Each discovering who she might be.



* * *



—

IN THE BEGINNING, Early Jones could never fall asleep in the Vignes house. The comfort disturbed him. He was used to sleeping under the stars or cramped in his car or lying on a hard prison cot. Or before all that, piled on a mattress stuffed with Spanish moss, beside eight of his siblings, whose names he no longer remembered, let alone their faces. He was not used to this: a big bed and homemade quilt, the headboard carved by a man nobody talked about but who lingered still in all the furniture. At first, he would lie in bed beside Desiree, under a roof that did not leak, and chase hopelessly after sleep. Sometimes he ended up pacing in front, smoking cigarettes at three in the morning, feeling as if the house itself had rejected him. Other times, he fell asleep on the porch and didn’t wake up until Desiree tripped over him the next morning.