Confessions on the 7:45(12)

Why won’t you answer me?
I trashed my whole life for you.
This was the usual pattern. Something casual—that had come earlier. Just thinking about you. Hope you’re doing okay. Then something pleading. Then more aggressive. Then nasty.

The least you can do is answer me.
Nothing to do but ignore it.

Geneva changed into sweats, put her hair up, then ate her food without bothering to reheat it. Sitting at the kitchen table, she stared absently out of the window into the park where she watched two slim teenage girls on the playground. It was late for kids to be out alone, wasn’t it? Maybe not, just after seven. But it was dark. One of them stared at a phone. The other pushed herself languidly on a swing, her head tilted against the chain.

The phone again: You know what? Fine. You’re ghosting me? You just make a mess, then disappear.

The two girls on the playground reminded her of another self, another life, one so long ago that it was faded and seemed as unreal as a dream, or an episode of a bad television drama that she’d watched without really seeing.

Two girls. One who wanted everything. And one who wanted nothing more than to disappear. She wondered if either one of them would ever get what they were after.

Another chime: One of these days this shit is going to catch up with you.

She reached over to block his number, but he got a final shot in before she did:

Whore.
The word burned a hole through her. She dropped the phone like it was hot. Her stomached knotted.

We reap what we sow, her mother used to say.

There was that rise of shame again. Was that true? Surely not. Because bad things happened to good people and good things happened to bad. Her sister was fond of saying how there was no justice beyond what you delivered yourself.

Geneva walked to the window, but the girls were gone, the playground dim and abandoned.

That’s when she saw his car. Windows black, headlights off. Just sitting.

Had he watched her come in?

She would call the police. But how could she?

Was he the criminal, the one to fear? Or was she?

She stood there watching the dark car, staying to the side of the window until finally the vehicle came to life and drifted away.



FIVE

Pearl

Pearl listened, that was her superpower. She had a gift for making herself invisible in a room so that people forgot that she was there. Slim and dark, plainly dressed, she wore thick-framed glasses that mostly hid her face. She made sure her voice was always soft, that a small half smile always played on her lips. She blended into her surroundings and most people didn’t mind her company.

At school, she was neither bullied, nor did she have any true friends. She made a point of being distantly agreeable.

“Pearl’s an easy child to like, a good student, highly intelligent, and helpful to others. Should we talk about her quietude, though? Her shyness? I wonder if she spends too much time on the sidelines. Though she always knows the answers when called, she rarely raises her hand.” A gentle query from her English teacher on Pearl’s stellar report card, at which her mother had glanced quickly, knowing that Pearl would have straight As.

“Shyness?” her mother, Stella, had mused, looking at Pearl with those watery blue eyes. There were layers and layers there. Pearl could almost get a glimpse of all the things her mother had been before she was Pearl’s mother—a neglected child, a stripper working her way through community college, a trophy wife cast aside for trophy wife number two, a single mother, a drunk, a bookseller with a struggling shop. Those eyes, they looked right into Pearl, knowing every cell of who she was. Stella, for all her failings as a mother, knew Pearl better than anyone.

“The last thing you are is shy.”

True. That’s the last thing Pearl was.

Tonight, fifteen-year-old Pearl was watching Charlie. He’d been an object of fascination for her since he’d wandered into her mother’s life a few weeks earlier. Not Mom’s usual type. He was quiet, bookish, a regular guy. But not. There was something behind his eyes, a flicker, a slither, a slipping darkness. There was a laughter there, too—not the nice kind.

One day he was the new clerk at her mother’s bookstore, unpacking boxes in the back, stocking shelves, ringing up customers. Pearl wondered how Stella could afford to bring on a new employee. The store was on the brink of going out of business. She knew better than to ask.

Then the following week, Charlie was driving her mother home at night. Pearl had watched from the window as they lingered in the black car that looked like a shark. Its engine rumbled, body gleaming in the streetlight.

Tonight, he was in their kitchen, cooking. He hummed, the kitchen alive with light and wonderful aromas.

The others—and there were many—were not like this guy. Mainly big, loud men. Tattoos, fake smiles, empty eyes. Dumb. They were generally not her mother’s equal in terms of intelligence. Her mother would be giddy at first, all breathless smiles, and fluttering hands. Then, quickly, she would shift to annoyed or angry, let down or bored. There might be fights, yelling—usually her mother doing the yelling, the men cowering, or leaving abruptly, never to return. Or sometimes they just disappeared—there one day, gone the next with no explanation.

Pearl had learned to pay them little mind. They ran together in her memory. She came to think of them as versions of the same man. Harmless; they never bothered her. Useless, one of Stella’s favorite critiques. Ultimately not good enough, lacking in some way. Pearl had collected an array of gifts—from Tom a bracelet with a real diamond chip, from Christian an iPod, a stuffed unicorn from...what was his name?