Too Good to Be True(10)
As if sensing my presence, the burglar turned toward me. I leaped back from the window, wincing. His eye was already swollen shut. Dang it. I hadn’t planned on hurting him. I hadn’t planned anything, really…just acted in the moment, I guess.
Officer Butch came back inside.
“Does he need some ice?” I whispered.
“He’ll be fine, ma’am. He says he’s staying next door, but we’re gonna take him to the station and verify his story.
Can you give me your contact information?”
“Sure,” I answered, reciting my phone number. Then the cop’s words sank in. Staying next door.
Which meant I just clubbed my new neighbor.
CHAPTER THREE
THE FIRST THING I DID UPON awakening was roll out of bed and squint through my hangover at the house next door.
All was quiet. No sign of life. Guilt throbbed in time with my pounding head as I recalled the stunned look on the burglar’s—or the not-burglar’s—face. I’d have to call the police station and see what had happened. Maybe I should alert my dad, who was a lawyer. Granted, Dad handled tax law, but still. Margaret was a criminal defense lawyer. She might be a better bet.
Dang it. I wished I hadn’t hit the guy. Well. Accidents happen. He was skulking around a house at midnight, right?
What did he expect? That I’d invite him in for a coffee? Besides, maybe he was lying. Maybe “staying next door”
was just his cover story. Maybe I’d just done a community service. Still, clubbing people was new to me. I hoped the guy wasn’t too hurt. Or mad.
The sight of my dress, which I hadn’t hung up in my furor last night, reminded me of Kitty’s wedding. Of Andrew and Natalie, together. Of Wyatt, my new imaginary boyfriend. I smiled. Another fake boyfriend. I’d done it again.
You may have gotten the impression that Natalie was…well, not spoiled, but protected. You’d be right. She was universally adored by our parents, by Margs, who didn’t give her love easily and, yes, even by Mémé. But especially by me. In fact, my very first clear memory in life was of Natalie. It was my fourth birthday, and Mémé was smoking a ciggie in our kitchen, ostensibly watching us while my cake baked in the oven, the warm smell of vanilla mingling not unpleasantly with her Kool Lights.
The kitchen of my childhood seemed to be an enormous place full of wonderful, unexpected treasures, but my favorite spot was the pantry, a long, dark closet with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Often would I go in and close the door behind me, eating chocolate chips from the bag in delicious silence. It was like a little house unto itself, complete with bottles of seltzer water and dog food. Marny, our cocker spaniel, would come in with me, wagging her little stump of a tail as I fed her kibbles, eating one myself once in a while. Sometimes Mom would open the door and yelp, startled to find me there, curled up next to the mixer with the dog. It always felt so safe in there.
At any rate, on my fourth birthday, Mémé was smoking, I was lurking in the pantry with Marny, sharing a box of Cheerios, when I heard the back door open. In came Mom and Dad. There was a flurry of activity…Mommy had been away for a few days, and then I heard her call my name.
“Gracie, where are you! Happy birthday, honey! We have someone who wants to meet you!”
“Where’s the birthday girl?” boomed Dad. “Doesn’t she want her presents?”
Suddenly aware of how much I missed my mother, I bolted from the cabinet, past Mémé’s skinny, vein-bumpy legs, and charged toward my mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table, still in her coat. She was holding a baby wrapped in a soft pink blanket.
“My birthday present!” I cried in delight.
Eventually, the grown-ups explained to me that the baby wasn’t just for me, but for Margaret and everyone else, too. My present was, in fact, a stuffed animal, a dog. (Later that day, according to family lore, I put the stuffed dog in the baby’s crib, delighting my parents with my generosity.) But I never got over the feeling that Natalie Rose was mine, certainly much more than she was Margaret’s, a feeling that Margaret, who was seven at the time and horribly sophisticated, nurtured in order to get out of her sisterly responsibilities. “Grace, your baby needs you,”
she’d call when Mom asked for help spooning yogurt into Nat’s mouth or changing a poopy diaper. I didn’t mind. I loved being the special sister, the big sister after four long years of being bossed around or ignored by Margaret. My birthday became more about Natalie and me, our beginning, than the day I was born. No, now my birthday was much more important. The day I got Natalie.
Natalie did not fail to delight. A stunning baby, she became more beautiful as she grew, her hair silky and blond, her eyes a startling sky-blue, cheeks as soft as tulip petals, eyelashes so long they touched her silken eyebrows.
Her first word was Gissy, which we all knew was her attempt to say my name.
As she grew, she looked up to me. Margaret, for all her gruffness and disdain, was a good sister, but more of the type to take you aside and explain how to get out of trouble or why you should leave her stuff alone. For playing, for cuddling, for company, Nat turned to me, and I was more than willing. At age four, she spent hours putting barrettes in my kinky curls, wishing aloud that her own blond waterfall of smoothness was, in her words “a beautiful brown cloud.” In kindergarten, she brought me in for show-and-tell, and on Special Person’s Day, you know who was at her side. When she needed help in spelling, I took over for Mom or Dad, making up silly sentences to keep things fun. During her ballet recitals, her eyes sought me out in the audience, where I’d be beaming back at her. I called her Nattie Bumppo after the hero of The Deerslayer, pointing to her name in the book to show her how famous she was.