“Not yet,” I said. “My father and his sister are away until late tomorrow.”
“Does that mean… can we see each other tomorrow at the same place?”
“I don’t know, Buddy. I’ll call you in the morning.” I looked back at the house. “Ava was looking for you today,” I said.
“What for?”
“I don’t know, but she will probably look for you again tomorrow.”
“She won’t be happy if she finds me. I can’t see any other girl but you, no matter who I look at or who I hear talking.”
“Ava’s very clever,” I said. “She’ll know immediately if you and I have met. She’ll get me in deeper trouble. Don’t dare mention me. She’ll tell my father.”
“This is nuts. I don’t want to keep hiding from your father,” he said.
“It has to be this way for now. If you can’t—”
“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, afraid I would end it then and there. “I’ll wait for your call, and if I see her, I’ll be careful. I promise. Will you call?”
“Yes,” I said. “Good night.” I quickly shut the phone. I heard movement in the house and hurried inside.
“What a good little housekeeper you are,” Ava said when she saw me enter. She was already in the kitchen, and I was afraid she had heard me make the phone call. “Mrs. Fennel will be so pleased with how you kept her kitchen. But don’t think that will get you off the hook with her or with Daddy,” she quickly added. Since she didn’t mention hearing me, I assumed I was safe.
“I know it won’t do that, Ava,” I said, sounding as remorseful as I could. “I can’t think of anything else.” How good could I be with this performance? I wondered. Could I be the student who matched the teacher? “I’m scared, Ava. I really messed up.”
She studied me a moment and then shook her head. “It’s not that tragic. Daddy won’t be pleased, of course, but considering that he’s planning on a move quite soon, he won’t be as worried as he would have been if you were staying here longer. I’m leaving, of course.”
“I don’t want to do anything to spoil your plans,” I said.
“Don’t worry. You won’t. You’ll live up to your responsibilities, I’m sure.”
I glanced at her to see if she were being sarcastic, but she wasn’t. If anything, she wore that face of utter self-confidence that shared a seat with arrogance.
“After all, you’re my prodigy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess I am. Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Daddy said late in the day tomorrow but early enough for Mrs. Fennel to prepare dinner. I’d say around four, maybe five. You’ll just have to be on pins and needles all day. I’d hang around and hold your hand, but I have to be at college. I’ve cut too many of the classes I have tomorrow and could bring some unnecessary attention to us. See? I think about that all the time. You’ll have to get so you do as well, Lorelei.”
“I will.”
“Maybe. You’d better. After my classes, I’m scouting a new hunting ground for us, the setting for your full initiation. It’s a club about fifty miles away near San Bernardino. I’ll be with you, but it might be my last outing for Daddy in California, or anywhere, for that matter.”
“You’ll really be on your own after that?”
“I’ll be on my own,” she said.
“And that doesn’t frighten you?”
“Frighten me? Hell, no. It’s my destiny, and the same will someday be true for you.”
“I still don’t understand that.”
“I’ve told you. You will. Okay, if you want me, I’ll be in my room showing Marla how to fix her hair and put on makeup. I’m turning her into a little femme fatale.”
“Why are you doing all this with her so soon? She’s years younger than I was, and I thought it would be my responsibility to prepare her.”
“Daddy’s orders,” she said. “Don’t look so worried about it. Everything will be just fine if you do what you were meant to do and nothing else.” She flashed a cold smile and left.
Maybe it was my experience with Buddy or simply something newly born inside me, but whatever it was, it enhanced my sense of loneliness. I had never felt more like an outsider than I did at that moment. When I walked through our home, everything suddenly looked strange to me. I felt as if I had entered someone else’s home. It occurred to me that except for the old piano I played, there was nothing in the house that called to me and only me. There was nothing I cherished and would want to bring with me when I left. What were my possessions, really? My clothes? Hardly. Most of them were handed down to me from Ava, and the things Daddy bought for me I was expected someday to hand down to Marla. What was mine, really mine?
There was only one thing that came to mind, and that was the picture of the woman who could be my mother. No one knew I had it, and that secret felt good to hold and to keep. I owned something of my past, something that told me more about who I was. It was my icon, my most religious possession.
I returned to my room and took the picture out. For a while, I simply stared at her face, as if I hoped it would somehow come to life and she would tell me exactly what I was to do. How I wished and hoped she was truly my mother. I needed her. I knew exactly what I would ask her if she were really there.
Should I see Buddy again? Can I fall in love? I imagined a conversation with her.
Had you fallen in love, Mommy? I loved the sound of the word Mommy.
Yes.
Was it poison, Mommy?
Oh, no, no. It filled me with hope and made every sunny day brighter, every color richer, everything I smelled and ate vibrant. It was truly being born again. I never felt so young and alive, Lorelei. It was far, far from poison.
That’s the way I feel right now when I think of Buddy, when I’m with Buddy, Mommy.
Then that’s good, Lorelei. Don’t lose it.
Where are you, Mommy? Why did you let me go? Did Daddy do the same thing to you that he did to Ava’s mother and the others? Will I ever see you, talk to you?
There was no reply. She became simply a photograph again, flat and cold. There was nothing to hug, no cheeks to kiss, no scent of hair to smell, and no lips to feel on my cheeks. Yet I embraced the photograph and held it against my heart.
The sound of footsteps jolted me. I quickly hid the picture and turned just as Ava opened my door.
“Who are you talking to?” she demanded.
“Talking? No one. Who’s here to talk to?”
“I was sure I heard you talking,” she said. I should have remembered how keen her hearing was now.
“I was probably thinking aloud,” I admitted.
“You weren’t on the cell phone?”
“What? Hardly,” I said.
She continued to stare suspiciously.
“Ava, I left it in the kitchen,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Why was it in the kitchen?”
“I went right to the kitchen when I returned from school to check on what had to be done and left my jacket hanging on the pantry doorknob. It’s still there. I’d better get it. Mrs. Fennel would have a fit.”
“Yes, she would,” she agreed. She stepped back for me to go out. “When you return, come to my room to see how beautiful I’ve made Marla. She looks ten years older.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
I hurried off. This was like living in Orwell’s 1984, I thought. Or Nazi Germany. Every word, every move I made, was under scrutiny. My sisters would rat on me in a heartbeat. There was only one person to trust: myself.
After giving it sufficient time, I went to Ava’s room. Marla was sitting at her vanity table. When she turned to look at me, I nearly lost my breath. She did look years older and somehow even more sophisticated and cunning than me.
“Well?” Ava asked.
“I’m stunned. You performed a miracle,” I said, hoping to please her.
“It wasn’t my miracle. It was hers,” she said, nodd
ing at Marla. “Everything is already there inside her. I’m just bringing it out the way I recently brought it out of you.”
“Maybe I should go with you and Lorelei on the next hunt,” Marla said.
Ava laughed. “Ambitious, isn’t she? I’m afraid not, little sister. You don’t go out there until Daddy says.”
“Maybe he’ll say I should,” she insisted.
Ava laughed again. “If you only had her edge, Lorelei, this wouldn’t all be such a struggle for you. Stop that damn thinking and worrying all the time.”
“I’ll be ready when Daddy calls me,” Marla said, turning back to look at herself in the mirror. She did have Ava’s vanity and ego.
“I’m going to read and go to sleep early,” I said. “I’m tired tonight.”
“You’re just terrified,” Marla said, talking to me through the mirror.
I looked at Ava, who widened her smile. “She’s so precious,” she said.
She wasn’t so precious to me, but I had to admit she was right: I was terrified. Was I on the verge of losing Daddy’s love completely? Why was I toying with it, endangering myself so much? It was clearly something neither of my sisters would do. And hearing the story about what Mrs. Fennel had done years ago didn’t comfort me. In the end, she had destroyed the one she loved and then didn’t blame it on who and what she was but on love itself. Was that what awaited me?
I was tormented with indecision and conflicting emotions all night. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t watch television. There was nothing that would shut off the turmoil inside me. I slept in spurts, waking and finding myself trembling as if I were freezing. I closed the window and put another cover over me, but I couldn’t shake off the chill. Something dark and very cold was in my room with me. I was drawn to the image of Daddy enveloping Mark Daniels just outside my window. I could hear Mark’s scream. If a renegade could be swallowed up so quickly and violently, what would happen to Buddy?
I must not call him tomorrow, I told myself. I must fight off the urge. That is the solution; that is the only solution. It gave me some comfort to think so, but when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, I saw his face. I heard his voice, and I felt his lips on my lips. I conjured him up so vividly it was as if he really were in my bed beside me, and as I envisioned him, felt myself surrender to his embrace, I felt that strange hardness move through my body, that hardness I had felt when I was really with him.
It made me sit up in a panic. I was breathing hard and fast, and there was the taste of blood in my mouth. Had I bitten my own lip? I rose and turned on the light at my vanity table. When I looked at myself, I thought the color of my eyes had changed from bluish green to Daddy’s ebony. My shoulders looked bigger.
And I hadn’t bitten my lip.
The taste of blood came from somewhere else, somewhere deep inside me.
I didn’t understand why it should make me feel as if I had stepped into a fire pit and was going up in smoke, but it did.
I quickly turned off the light, and as Daddy had promised I would, I welcomed the embrace of darkness.
16
Embrace of Darkness
I had convinced Ava that she had to take Marla to school in the morning, emphasizing that I couldn’t do it, because a suspended student was not permitted to go on the property. I heard them get up and go to breakfast. When Ava looked in on me, I was still in bed. I sat up as soon as she stepped into my room.
“What time is it? Did you need me to do something?” I asked her.
“No. I just wanted to see what you were doing. I see you’re taking advantage of this opportunity.”
“I’m tired.”
“You can sleep all day for all I care, Lorelei. I have to leave earlier to get Marla to school, thank you. We’re leaving.”
“I’m sorry, Ava.”
“Right.”
“Actually, I’m too nervous to sleep and too nervous to get up,” I said.
“Don’t overdo it,” she told me, smirking. “Daddy can see right through a false face, and you know how he hates dishonesty among us. I’ll be back after I pick up Marla at the end of her school day.”
“Okay.”
“Daddy and Mrs. Fennel will be home about then,” she said. She hesitated a moment and then walked out to take Marla to school and go to her own classes.
I rose slowly and stood before my clothes in the closet, trying to decide what to put on. Every little decision, whether it was what to wear, how to fix my hair, where to sit, what to read, literally anything I had to decide, was agonizing. I knew it all radiated from the one big decision I had to make that day: to call Buddy or not. I had no doubt that if I didn’t call him, he would surely eventually call me. I could leave my phone off, but later, if I forgot and turned it on while Ava or Daddy and Mrs. Fennel were home, it would signal a message they might hear, and they would want to know who was calling me.
The truth was that despite everything Ava had said, I wanted to call Buddy. I wanted to see him again. Maybe this was genuine love, or maybe it was simply a portal through which I could enter another world, the world I saw other girls my age enjoying. Ava and Daddy and even Mrs. Fennel held out the promise of a life in which I would enjoy everything anyone else enjoyed but ten times as much and forever. This was what my mysterious destiny would provide if I only lived up to my responsibilities as Daddy’s daughter. For us girls, this was the heaven that awaited. Neither Brianna nor Ava seemed to have any difficulty believing in it. Even my younger sister, Marla, was more devout than I was when it came to the promise of our futures. Why wasn’t I as trusting and as satisfied with the promise?
I wandered about the house like a confused particle of matter that had broken off and was floating through space with no clear direction or purpose. For a while, I tried to amuse myself by tinkering on the piano, but the long, deep silence before and after intensified my anxiety. For a few minutes, I toyed with my phone, teasing myself with turning it on and then quickly turning it off. The tension inside me made it seem stifling in the house, so I went out and around to the back, where I could sit on the patio and capture the warmth and promise of the strengthening late-morning sunshine.
We had nearly an acre of land, with the back being undeveloped woods. The excited twitter of baby birds caught my attention. It was coming from a leafy oak tree off to my right. I rose and walked to it to study the branches until I spotted the nest. Moments later, the mother swooped in with some worms in its beak. The baby birds grew even more excited. While I watched and listened, I recalled that afternoon when Daddy took me out to explain what Brianna had done when she had brought that young man to the house. Once again, I felt the strong love I had felt for Daddy that day. I remembered how safe he had made me feel when he held me. There was nothing in this world that could harm me as long as he was there to protect me. But what, I wondered now, was the price that I and my sisters ultimately paid for that security? What did we really sacrifice?
What had my mother sacrificed, and Brianna’s mother and Marla’s mother? According to what I had been told, Ava’s mother had lost her life, but what had caused the others to give up their babies? What had they risked for love and devotion? Did they feel so strongly and so passionately about their lovers that they were blind to the costs? They didn’t seem like teenagers who had sexual accidents. Maybe one of them was committing adultery. Maybe they all were. Maybe they were devout Catholics who had to have their babies but gave them away. Whatever the reasons, they suffered because of their passion.
Perhaps that was the difference between me and my sisters, I suddenly thought. They didn’t know the answers, either, but I did know how powerful our passions could be. And I knew only because of what I felt when I was with Buddy. From what I understood, my older sisters had never had this experience, and Marla would surely not have it, either.
But I had had it, and I still had it, I thought. Why should I just throw it away without fully experiencing it? We were all special in our own way. Maybe this was what
made me special. Determined now, I reached into my pocket and took out the cell phone to turn it on. The mother bird flew above me and off to the left to continue hunting for the food its babies needed. I watched it disappear, heard the babies crying for more, and then called Buddy. He really must have been keeping his phone close to his heart, because he picked up on the first ring.
“Lorelei?”
“Yes,” I said. “Where are you?”
“I’m sitting in the rear of my uncle’s house dreaming of you. I slept here last night,” he confessed, “on the sofa where you sat. It helped me to feel close to you again.”
“What about your classes? Didn’t you attend any today?”
“Nothing else seems to matter to me.”
“Now you’re making me feel bad,” I said. “You’re going to ruin your college grades.”
“Don’t feel bad. I can make up any time I’ve lost. In fact, if you come to me today, I promise I’ll work harder and be at the top of my class.”
I laughed. It took only seconds of hearing his voice to wash away my tension. There was something honest and sincere about him, and that not only relaxed me but gave me a sense of optimism. For me, Buddy proved that all boys weren’t what Ava portrayed them to be, prey or opponents. My conversations with Buddy didn’t have to be coy, and I didn’t have to be constantly on the defensive. There were lines I couldn’t cross, but Ava would never consider a simple walk on the beach with a boy as something desirable. She was, like Brianna, always the hunter. There would never be a we in Ava’s or Brianna’s vocabulary, but did that mean there could never be one for me either?