In Her Skin(8)

You release your knees, unfold your long body, and walk down the stairs slow, slower than I know you have energy for, because I watched you before you knew I was watching. Your feet are bare and white, and bones rise under your camisole straps forming diamond caves. You stand in your pale cami and your hair braided at the temples (Temple!) and tucked behind your ears, so close I can see the pin-dot holes where the diamonds were and smell the black licorice you just ate on your breath. Your eyes start at the top of my head and work their way down: the crown of my forehead, eyes. A flick between both ears, down the nose and settling on my mouth. I twitch. To my chin and down my neck: chest, hands, waist, and knees, every part examined. I am not safe under plastic and your eyes are not my clumsy thumb. Years with Momma’s boyfriends have hardened me to stares, but by the time you get to my feet, my heart is pounding so loud I am sure you can hear it.

Do you know me?

In an instant, your mother is at my side. “You’re thinking it’s a miracle, aren’t you?” she says, hugging you at the shoulder.

You only look at me.

“Temple,” Mr. Lovecraft says. “Your mother asked you a question.”

Mrs. Lovecraft waves it off. “Vivi’s been through so much. We have time to catch up. For now, sleep.”

Your eyes flash over me one last time, wary. You aren’t sure. I tell myself it’s not that my eyes are hazel where Vivi’s were green. It’s not that my left front tooth crosses over my right, where Vivi’s teeth were strong and straight. It’s that you don’t want Vivi back. And I don’t blame you. Vivi was your friend from third grade. You had third-grade things in common: boy bands and glitter nail polish and diaries. I’m going to have to win you over as Vivi, when Jolene Chastain would talk to you about Emily Dickinson and books with coffee rings on their covers and in a book, this is called irony.

Of course you’re iffy about me. You’re Miss Number One Everything. Vivi’s return takes the spotlight off you. Where I spent half my life trying to become invisible from Momma’s boyfriends and the cops, you’ve spent sixteen years as the center of boot-licking admiration. You and Vivi may have history, but Vivi’s reappearance could make your whole life go sideways. So yes, it is to be expected that you won’t embrace me.

Yet.

With a swish of flannel and hair you are gone. Mrs. Lovecraft puts her arm around my shoulder, just as she did with you, and I show her I like it with a weak smile.

“You’re going to have to excuse Temple,” she says, steering me toward the stairs. “She has so many questions. In time, she’ll adjust to your being back.”

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“To your room,” Mrs. Lovecraft says.

I never go to sleep this early. The less you sleep in Tent City, the less you lose. As if she reads my mind, she says, “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep? I imagine it must be hard to quiet your mind.”

Ahh. Bad Shed Thoughts. I haven’t fully considered the explanations Vivi’s kidnapping will provide, from avoiding eye contact to keeping my clothes on to my crappy dental hygiene.

“So hard,” I murmur.

“I think I have something that will help,” she says, leading me up the stairs. Behind us, Mr. Lovecraft slips into his office and slides the pocket door closed. She leads me to the second floor, where a pretty window seat looks out across the Commonwealth Avenue mall to the Charles and the blinking lights of Cambridge. She points out the bedroom and bathroom she shares with Mr. Lovecraft, and a third room, its door shut.

“This is where Slade stays,” she explains. “The surveillance we employ him for requires him to stay awake through the night and sleep during the day. I don’t want you to be surprised if you hear anything at odd hours.”

“So, he protects the family while you sleep?”

“That’s right.”

The house gets narrow as we climb to the third floor, where, again, there are three doors. One leads to what will be my room, which is wallpapered royal blue with tiny gold lilies and contains a dresser, a nightstand, and a four-poster bed fit for a princess. The covers are pulled back at the corner; underneath, the sheets are fresh-looking and tight. My body aches for that bed. The second door is yours, and it’s shut. A tiny bathroom is behind the third, with a tub perched on claw feet and a tufted rug. There is old-fancy and old-crappy, and this is the first. Mrs. Lovecraft feels for a plushy robe behind the door and hands it to me before twisting the gold faucet on. She straightens and digs her knuckles into her hips. I stare at the water pouring into the tub and I cannot get under that water fast enough.

“Do you need help getting undressed?” she asks, pitchy. She hopes I’ll say no so she doesn’t have to see the stories Vivi’s naked body will tell her.

“I’m good.”

“Then may I give you something to relax?”

I am a Popsicle on a summer day and Clarissa Lovecraft is the sun, and she is offering a soft, cool bed and hot water and now drugs, and I could make out with her, and where at first she was a woman who seemed less than her handsome husband, now she is a goddess, with her beginnings of a neck wattle and her noble beak-nose.

I nod hard.

She disappears and returns with two green pills. “Ativan. Perfectly safe if you don’t make a habit of it.” I want to tell her that if I didn’t make it a habit in Tent City, where one out of two residents is stoned out of their mind, and if I didn’t make it a habit in the years when Momma was using, I’m not going to make a habit of it in Back Bay.