“See,” she said to LaShay. “See what I put up with? Talk about ruining some expensive weed. Just like his father, he can mess up a good time.”
LaShay nodded and glared back at us as if it was true that we were the bad ones.
Del shook his head and said, “You disgust me.”
He went down to Shawn and Patty Girl’s room. I followed, and when we looked in, we saw they were not asleep. They were together, holding each other.
“Hey,” he said, moving in quickly. “What’s the matter with you two?”
“Bad dream,” Patty Girl said. “Screaming for Mommy, but she didn’t come.”
“Oh, the poor thing,” I said.
“You have to go back into your own bed, Patty Girl, or neither of you will get any sleep. C’mon,” he said, and tried to lift her away from Shawn, who just looked up at us wide-eyed and held on to his little sister for dear life.
Del turned to me.
“God knows what went on here before we arrived,” he told me.
I knelt down and started to reassure Patty Girl.
“I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep,” I promised. That brought some hope into her little eyes. She loosened her grip on her brother, and Del got him to loosen his on her. I put her into her bed and sat beside her. “I have an older brother, too,” I told her, “and he told me that when I have a bad dream, I should push it back into the pillow.”
“How?” she asked.
“Just push your head hard into the pillow and then close your eyes and tell your bad dream to get out. Go on,” I urged.
She looked at Del, and he nodded. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her head back.
“Say ‘get out,’ ” I urged.
“Get out,” she repeated.
“Good,” I said. “Just a moment.”
I took the pillow out and pretended to shake the dream onto the floor.
“There,” I said. “It’s gone. You can sleep now.” I returned the pillow under her head and she smiled. “Close your eyes and try to sleep,” I said.
Del and I sat in the room with his brother and sister and whispered to each other. Outside the door, we could hear his mother and her girlfriend LaShay continue to laugh and smoke.
“Maybe your idea about running off isn’t so stupid after all,” he said.
“It isn’t. By doing what you’ve been doing, all you are accomplishing is keeping them in a bad situation, Del. I know you don’t want to see them separated and sent off to foster homes.”
He nodded.
“You’re pretty good with her,” he said, looking at Patty Girl, who was now asleep.
“I guess I just think about what I wish it had been like for me when I was her age,” I said. “Maybe if I had a big sister like me…”
My voice and my wish drifted off like smoke.
He looked at his watch.
“You had better get home, Teal. It’s getting late, and you could get into bigger trouble.”
As quietly as we could, we slipped out of the bedroom. We paused in the hallway. His mother and LaShay had gone into her bedroom and were now talking very low.
“She’s going to get her into something very bad,” he predicted. “It’s just a matter of time anyway.”
“We can do something about this, Del. You’ll see,” I said.
He nodded and smiled hopefully. He looks desperate enough to believe in the tooth fairy tonight, I thought.
“It’s not a fantasy,” I assured him.
He walked me to where I could get a taxi home, and then we kissed good night.
“Thanks for helping with them,” he said.
I felt so sorry for him, so sad when he closed the taxi door and we started away.
He stood there watching me drive off in the taxi and then put his hands in his pockets, lowered his head, and returned to a hell far worse than my own.
7
In a Reckless Mood
I was able to get back into my house and up into my room without being discovered. It reinforced my feeling that I could do anything I wanted if I was just careful and clever enough. I was so excited about the possibilities that loomed ahead for Del and me that it took me quite a while to fall asleep. I imagined us all heading west in my mother’s SUV, looking forward like explorers out to discover new worlds, every experience fresh and promising. To live without rules and restrictions, curfews and punishments was truly to be free.
As usual on a weekend, I slept late into the morning. For a while when I was younger, my father tried to get me to rise earlier and take care of my personal chores, like make my bed and clean up my room, but Mommy never liked how I did it and was always afraid someone would look in and see.
“She’s deliberately messy, Amanda, because she knows you’ll have the maids do everything if she is,” Daddy told her, but it was less stressful for her to have the maids take care of my things than oversee the way I did it They just had to wait for me to rise and go down to breakfast, and that was that.
Actually, what woke me this particular morning was the sound of Mommy crying. I could hear her sobbing below in the sitting room because the window was open and the window in my room was open. At first I thought it was a baby bird that might have fallen out of its nest.
Seeing and hearing my mother cry was not very unusual. She could shed tears over the smallest, silliest things, such as getting a luncheon invitation days after a friend had gotten hers, or having her name left out of an article on the society pages. What, I wondered, would she ever do if she had even a tenth of the problems Del had? So I didn’t rush down to see what was wrong. I showered, dressed, and by the time I got downstairs, she was sitting quietly in the living room and just staring out the window, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and jerking her shoulders up like someone with the hiccups.
“What is it now, Mother?” I asked from the doorway, my voice heavy with disgust.
She turned slowly. Then she sighed deeply, so deeply someone might think her heart had cracked in two.
“I confronted your brother this morning,” she said, holding her hand to the base of her throat. “He has indeed gone ahead and proposed to Ellery, but what is worse is, everything has already been decided: where the wedding will be held, colors of the gowns, favors, even the menu!”
“Well, that should make you happy, Mother. Why are you crying? You don’t have much to worry about now.”
She paused and stared at me as if I had gone completely insane. Then she shook her head and looked out the window again. The sky was overcast and the day looked gloomy, which I was sure fitted her mood snugly.
“Leaving me out of what is the most important day in his mature life should make me happy?” she said. “I feel like my own son stabbed me in the back.”
“Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll be sure to have you make all the arrangements for my wedding, especially the colors of the napkins,” I said, and she spun around.
“This isn’t funny, Teal. How do I face my friends when they ask about the wedding? Do you know the announcement has already been constructed and sent into the papers? To have accomplished all this so quickly, Waverly Taylor must have known this was coming for some time. My suspicion is your brother gave Ellery the engagement ring long before he even told you he was going to do it and certainly long before he planned on telling me.”
That was a sour note for me. She was probably right, which meant I wasn’t taken into his confidence to the extent I had thought. I was so desperate to believe my brother was finally treating me like his sister that I accepted it all without any doubt.
“I’m just sick over this, just sick,” Mother said. “I have a good mind to just tell them to go ahead and plan the rehearsal dinner, too. That is supposed to be my— your father’s and my responsibility. The worst thing about all this is, your father isn’t a bit upset and probably wouldn’t mind if I did tell them that.”
“He’s not upset because he knew it all,” I blurted.
Her eyes went into
that wide mode that revived my memories of ET.
“What are you saying, Teal? I was the only one in this family kept in the dark? Your brother told your father everything, told you, had his future in-laws involved, but left me out?”
My perfect brother Carson, I thought, really messed up. It brought a smile to my lips, which my mother misinterpreted as my being happy she was excluded. She bristled.
“Well?”
“I’m not an experienced detective, Mother,” I said, “but the clues seem to point in that direction,” I added, and sauntered off to breakfast. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so gleeful, but I couldn’t help it. For once, Mother might be thinking I’m not the worse of her two children, even if that thought lasted only a few hours.
To her credit, my mother wasn’t one to wallow in her self-pity all day. She got herself together and decided firmly that she would not be left out of any more decisions concerning the wedding. She got on the phone and called Waverly Taylor, insisting they meet for lunch. Whether it would be true or not, she was determined to give the appearance of having been involved in the wedding arrangements right from the start.
In fact, Mother was soon talking and acting as if nothing contrary had occurred. She was on the phone with her friends, discussing all the details about the wedding as if she had been in on it even before Ellery, much less her mother. This, she claimed, was the way she wanted it to be; this was happening because of her suggestions. Soon the talk, the plans, the excitement all served as a big distraction. No one noticed my comings and goings. More importantly, I was able to add to what I now considered Del’s and my escape money, pilfering periodically from Mother’s purse.
So as not to create any more complications, I behaved like a little marionette in school and continued to improve in my studies, even to the extent that Mr. Bloomberg himself made it a point to stop me in the hallway one morning to tell me how happily surprised he was by my healthy new attitude.
“I never had any doubts you could do well, Teal,” he said, “if you put your mind to it.”
That remark almost shattered the mask of polite smiles I wore. Who did he think he was kidding? He probably had placed a bet on my impending expulsion.
I thanked him as politely and sickeningly sweetly as I could before I continued down the corridor. I was such a perfect young lady that I thought I would puke up my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The only one who was really upset with me these days was Carson, who cornered me in the house one night after he had a meeting with Daddy. I never had to try to avoid Carson. Usually he took little interest in me except to give me some warning or short lecture.
We hadn’t spoken since the day he came to my bedroom and offered to help me, even giving me the money, which I gave immediately to Del.
“Just a minute, Teal,” I heard after he had emerged from Daddy’s office. I was halfway up the stairs. I paused and looked down at him. He stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at me.
“You caused quite a mess for me, not keeping our secret,” he began.
“Our secret?” I said, stepping down the stairs. “Our secret, Carson? You told Daddy long before you told me, didn’t you? And you had already asked Ellery to marry you long before that, right?”
“I trusted you with the news,” he countered.
“What news?” I shrugged. “Mother knows the Taylors knew before she did. She’s putting on a good act now for her friends, but you and I know she was devastated, Carson, and for once it was you and not me who did the devastating.”
“You’re such a little bitch, Teal.”
“Why, because I tell it like it is, because I’m honest?”
He choked back a laugh.
“You? Honest?” He stopped smiling. “Where’s my hundred dollars?”
“I used it to buy bubble gum,” I said, turned, and walked back up the stairs.
“You won’t have any friends, Teal,” he called after me. “When people can’t trust you, they won’t want you for a friend.”
I didn’t reply. I went into my room and shut the door. Maybe he was right. Maybe I would never have a real friend. Despite the brave front I put up and my toughness at times, I did fear that I had grown like a weed in a neglected garden. Even though I could claim it wasn’t my fault, perhaps, I was still not a nice person, not someone anyone would want for a friend. When I was younger, I imagined my dolls weren’t happy being with me. I didn’t take especially good care of them, maybe because they were tossed my way like so much pablum designed to keep me quiet in my cage.
I would show all of them finally, especially Carson, I thought, sulking in my room. Del and I would do it. We would run off and leave them standing with their mouths wide open. I counted the additional money I had stolen. It was nearly fifteen hundred dollars. I knew it wasn’t nearly enough, and that made me feel sick. How long could I keep up this goody-goody girl behavior? What a fool I had been to give Shirley the diamond bracelet, I thought. I had done it to impress Del, but now it would have come in handy. Maybe I could get her to give it back to me.
I went back downstairs and waited for an opportunity to use the phone. As soon as Daddy left the house, I went into his office and closed the door softly. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up at Shirley’s house. Frustrated, I left and found Mother getting herself ready to meet someone at the golf club. I asked her to drop me off at the mall, claiming I had to buy a new pair of running shoes for physical education class. I even got her to give me two hundred dollars.
“Don’t spend it all at the mall,” she told me. “Keep something for a taxi home and come right home, Teal, as soon as you buy the shoes. I don’t need your father chastising me for letting you run loose.”
“I’m not running loose, Mother. I’m doing some important errands.”
“I know that, but your father keeps talking about waiting for the second shoe to drop, whatever that means. He makes me very nervous. Just keep being good, please. What I don’t need now, with all these plans to work out for the wedding, are any complications.”
“I thought everything had been decided about the wedding, Mother,” I said.
She smiled gleefully.
“Waverly Taylor is really not equipped to handle such an important social event. I’ve had to make a number of changes already,” she said proudly. “She simply doesn’t understand what goes with what, what is the proper etiquette, and what people of quality expect at such an event. She has money but no class,” Mother added.
“She’s lucky to have you, then,” I said.
She looked at me, deciding whether to believe me or not. I tried to appear as innocent and as sincere as I could, and she nodded.
“Yes, she is lucky,” she concluded.
As soon as I arrived at the mall, I rushed to the pizza parlor to see Del. Luckily, he was on a break. His face brightened the moment he saw me.
“I was hoping you’d find a way here today,” he said. “I’ve got some good news.”
“What?”
I sat beside him quickly. Had he come up with some money, too? Had he found a way for us to leave sooner? We had spent so much time talking about it since I first introduced the possibility. We would lie side by side in his bed after making love and talk until it was late and I had to get home. Someone else might think we were romanticizing, but he or she wouldn’t know how serious we were and how desperate we were. Desperate people do desperate things, Del told me, and I could see he had come to believe in us. It had given him new hope, and when he had hope, I had hope.
“My mother got a good job,” he said, and I felt my body sink as if all my bones had turned to soft clay. That was what made him so happy?
“What do you mean? What job?”
“Hairdresser, and in a very good and busy salon, too. She’s going to make some decent money. She’s been clean for nearly a week now, no drugs, no booze. She’s even given up smoking, realizing it’s damaging her complexion.”
“Oh,
” I said, not hiding my disappointment that well.
“And it all hasn’t come a moment too soon, either. We had another visit from the social services department. When she was able to show she had gainful employment, they backed off. Maybe they’ll leave us be now. Isn’t that great?”
“Yes,” I said, but not with as much enthusiasm as he would have liked, I know. “But hasn’t she done this before, Del?”
“She has, but not with as much enthusiasm. Something woke her up. Maybe she saw something, someone go bad or something. I don’t know. LaShay hasn’t been around either, so that’s a good sign. My constant nagging finally paid off. The kids are happier, too.”
I nodded. In my closed fist, I had the money Mother had given me. Del looked at it.
“What’s that?”
“What? Oh. Something more to add to our fund,” I told him, and unfolded my hand to show him the four fifty-dollar bills. He stared at it.
“You have to quit doing this, Teal. It’s going to become very serious and you’ll get into big trouble. I can’t take any more of your money,” he said. “Absolutely cannot.”
“Why not? I thought we had decided that—”
“Don’t you see?” he cried, his face in a vivid grimace. “Now more than ever, I have to be very careful for my family, Teal. I have to continue to set an example for my mother to follow. I know it should be the other way around, but it’s not, and that’s just the way it is.”
I closed my fist around the money and pulled my arm back.
“What about our plans?” I asked.
He shook his head and sipped his soda.
“I’m just trying to get by each day for now. Thinking about the future is a luxury.”
“Not to me,” I said sharply, and stood up. “I’m not going to hang around here forever. With or without you, I’m going to do something.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned. “You’ve kept out of trouble this long. Don’t mess up, Teal.”
“Thanks,” I said, and walked away. I heard him call after me, but I didn’t turn around.