The Elizas: A Novel(91)

She opened the door wider and readied herself, but then her stepfather appeared from out of nowhere and clapped his hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” he whispered, widening his eyes in warning. Dot stared at him, puzzled. He pushed her back into her room.

Downstairs, soft murmuring: “Can you describe your relationship with your sister?”

Dot’s mother answered, but Dot couldn’t make out what she said. The conversation lasted another minute or so, and then the door shut.

Her mother appeared up the stairs, her head bowed. Dot’s stepfather moved aside to let her into Dot’s room. Dot scrambled back to her bed, afraid of what was to come. But Dot’s mother’s face was kind when she entered the room. She walked up to Dot and took her hands.

“That was the police,” she said evenly. “About Dorothy. They have her body at the morgue.”

Dot breathed in. She searched her mother’s face, but her mother wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Oh,” was all she could think to say.

“The police wanted to talk to you, but I said you hadn’t seen her in ten years.” She finally looked up at Dot. “Do you understand?”

Dot licked her lips. “But that’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“But I—”

“No buts,” her mother said steadily. “We talked about this.”

Dot swallowed. She watched as her mother and her stepfather exchanged a glance over her head.

“But people saw us,” she said softly. “People at the restaurant. That steak house.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

Again, Dot tried to catch her mother’s gaze, but she wouldn’t look in her direction.

“Can I see her body?” she asked. She needed to prove to herself it had really happened, that Dorothy was really gone. It was still unthinkable that any of it had happened. The poisoning, the manipulation—to her, Dorothy’s alleged favorite. How could she have done such a thing? How could Dot have let it go on for so long? Would a smarter girl have caught on sooner?

Her parents exchanged a shocked glance. “Absolutely not,” her mother said.

And then her parents stood up and left the room. Stay here, they told her. Don’t you dare leave.

To Dot’s horror, there was a memorial held for Dorothy, and Dot’s family insisted she go. Not going would arouse suspicion. Just act normal, they told her. Don’t talk to anyone.

It was held at M&F Chop House. There were steaks for all, and unlimited drinks. The mood was buoyant and Hollyweird. Bartenders in white jackets and turbans mixed martinis. Someone circulated with a platter full of Cuban cigars. There was a woman walking around with a monkey on her shoulder; both were wearing tiaras. A couple of Vegas showgirls performed, and then a burlesque dancer, and then a Frank Sinatra impersonator. The place was crawling with writers, but some of them Dot had been sure were already dead—James Joyce with his little glasses, Oscar Wilde in a topcoat, a ghostly Virginia Woolf. There were people there who looked as though they might be dressed up for Halloween: a leathery-skinned man in a cowboy hat and with a handlebar mustache, a large-eyed woman in a peacock-colored caftan with a crystal ball under her arm, a huge black man with a tattoo on his face and a bone through his nose.

Dot wandered through the crowds of revelers double-fisting drinks. Just being confined between these walls made her skin crawl with guilt. The only respite was that Bernie the bartender and all the other normal staff members were nowhere to be seen. Oddly, when she dared to ask the bartender on duty where Bernie was that day, he looked at her blankly as if he’d never heard of him.

Eerily, there was no body in a casket. Dot asked and asked, and finally her mother admitted that Dorothy’s will stated that a friend pick up her body from the morgue and dispose of it as she wished, and apparently those instructions didn’t include putting her body in a casket for a funeral. Dot wondered if Dr. Singh was the one who’d retrieved Dorothy from the morgue. She peered through the crowd for him, hoping to get some answers. But he hadn’t come.

At one point, a woman in a fortune-teller’s turban holding a half-drunk martini teetered toward Dot.

“Oh, Dorothy, this is so like you to stage a funeral when you’re not actually dead.”

Dot had stared at her, sickened. “I’m not Dorothy.”

The woman blinked woozily. “Oh,” she said. “Of course not. You’re a few years too young. Still, what a wonderful party trick!”

Dot felt so disgusted. She broke away from her and ran, finding herself opening double doors into another dining area. Though the whole restaurant had been rented out for the funeral, this room was empty. The tables were set neatly with linens and napkins, but no one sat at them. Her footsteps echoed noisily as she crossed the wood floor to the bar.

She peered into the antique mirror behind the bottles. She had never looked more like her aunt in her life, maybe because she was guilty of something now, too. What would it be like if she went back to the memorial and pretended to be her, for real? How many people would buy it? She wondered what she might do in Dorothy’s name. Hideous things she’d never dared, or nice, sweet things to make up for her aunt’s transgressions?

Staring at herself, something new pressed down on Dot, a bone-shaking frisson she couldn’t help but peek at sideways. Even if Dorothy deserved it, someone was going to figure out what she’d done. If not the police, then Dorothy’s ghost.