In Her Skin(46)
I place my cheek against the wall. I want to say I’m sorry, but I can’t, because I’m not.
That night I dream of Momma. We’re in the Dwiggins room, that marionette room in the library, and we are doing a new con, but my time is running out to learn it. Also, Momma has to be quiet explaining it to me, because we’re not supposed to be in the Dwiggins room. I can’t seem to wrap my brain around it, and there is something desperate about Momma; if I don’t get this new con, something terrible is going to happen. But I can’t think straight. It’s complicated, this con, but I am older and I should be able to get it. Momma is frustrated, is trying to regress me, something she used to do when I couldn’t get the right lifetime in my head, but it’s like she’s speaking a different language. Finally, Momma takes a key out of her ear, like a magician with a penny, and unlocks one of the cases.
“Don’t!” I cry, because I know those marionettes are mean mothers and they’re just waiting to get out from under that glass and chew our limbs off with their clickety-clackety mouths.
“I’m going to act it out for you,” Momma says, pulling out two dolls.
And there I have to sit, watching Momma with seams across her face where the Last One smashed it in, holding two puppets high in the air, acting out the trick I am supposed to perform, but Momma isn’t tall enough and the wooden feet and buckled legs keep dragging on the glass case. Footsteps and voices approach, along with the unmistakable yelling of guards, and dogs barking, and I keep trying to tell Momma we have to run, and it’s the old panic again, the one I felt when I knew the Last One was going to kill her. But Momma ignores the noises, insisting I learn the con …
I sit up in my bed. Window, chair, nightstand. Moonlight on the fire escape, neon clock. My chest pounds and skitters dangerously. I think I am having a heart attack. I peel the sheets down and they stick to my sweaty legs, and I fight to free myself. Through my window I hear the demented yells of the last of the drunk college students heading toward Fenway. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and hoist myself across the hall to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my cheeks until they grow numb.
In the mirror, I see Momma’s face, blank with fear.
*
Sunday morning is impossibly bright, and the Lovecrafts sleep in, probably hungover, and I am hungover on my nightmare. Confessing murder agrees with you, on the other hand. When I stumble downstairs you sit at the table already pouring milk, showered, fully dressed, hair glossy in a high ponytail. Slade lurks around the edges, drinking coffee behind his newspaper, hangdog like he got railed at yesterday for leaving us cowering in the limo. Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft stroll down the stairs, swatting each other with their bathrobe ties, giggling.
A glob of Honey Nut Cheerios gets stuck in my throat. I gulp milk and swallow hard.
You pour more cereal into your bowl. “So are you guys gonna tell Vivi the good news or make me wait some more?”
Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft sweep into their seats. Mrs. Lovecraft pours coffee for herself and Mr. Lovecraft, and Slade looks increasingly uncomfortable, and they must have asked him to stay up.
“Mom?” you say, impatient.
“Yes, all right, Temple. Vivi, the news has to do with you. Actually, it’s more than one thing. First, we’ve decided you should go to the Parkman School next September. I know it will be strange at first, but we’re concerned you’re missing out on the social aspects of school. How do you feel about that?”
I feel like I just learned your daughter killed the real Vivienne Weir, so feeling strange is relative.
“Cool.”
“That’s hardly the only news,” Mr. Lovecraft says. “Clarissa?”
Mrs. Lovecraft sits next to me and holds my hand. “We’d like to formally adopt you. With your consent, the process will be initiated by our legal team starting tomorrow. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Over Mrs. Lovecraft’s shoulder, you raise your eyebrows.
*
By Monday morning, Slade is gone, replaced by Gerry, who is polite and has a beautiful accent and is deadly serious. Before Gerry came to the United States, he was a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army under a Ugandan warlord. I don’t know the details of Gerry’s life beyond the fact that he escaped and was “rehabilitated” and came here, and if anyone wanted to compare our crappy childhoods, I’m betting Gerry wins, hands down.
Unlike Slade, Gerry rejects the idea of sleeping. As far as I can tell, he naps once every day, from four p.m. to six p.m., and requires no more. This allows Gerry to spend a lot of time watching me. I notice when I am being noticed. Gerry looks at me like he understands what being trapped is. This shouldn’t make sense, because on the surface, I am the luckiest girl in the world. (Spending money! Car services! Dinners in fancy restaurants!) People dependent on monsters know one another, whether those monsters live in Back Bay or in the bush. When things are quiet, he looks at me this way. The only way to call Gerry out on this is to get him alone, so I wait until Temple is fencing and make up an excuse to go for a walk to the Public Garden.
I start at a pretty good clip, heading down Commonwealth Avenue, crossing at Arlington Street and heading riverward toward Marlborough Street. Gerry walks six paces behind me. I stop and turn.
“Why don’t you just walk with me?” I yell.
Gerry stops and shakes his head. “This is where I walk.”