Invisible

  Then Peyton had run out of the room, leaving us standing there glaring at each other, before Frank finally wheeled around to watch TV in the living room, and I pulled out a bucket and tin of cleanser to scrub the kitchen like some madwoman. What he had insinuated about Joe was ridiculous. Insulting. If I was so intent upon rekindling a high school romance, I wouldn’t have waited until now to do so.

  I filled a cup before the coffee finished brewing, and stepped outside into the morning’s dewy embrace.

  Someone had built a rock garden. Our mother had had one, and Julie had always wanted one, so I supposed it was hers. Back home in Baltimore, spring was in full bloom, the rich vibrant colors of azaleas, lilies, marigolds, and peonies bursting across lawn after lawn. Here, the season was just getting under way. Smooth gray stones peeked out beneath a mat of leggy clover and dandelions. Furled violets waited for the sun to rise so they could turn and open their faces. A cement fountain, green with moss. Along the back fence, daffodils bloomed, cheek to cheek with straggly weeds that would send Martin into fits if he saw them. Near them stood a plastic playhouse, faded pink and blue. Peyton would surely have crawled inside it to have tea parties with her teddy bear. No, scratch that. Peyton didn’t seem the sort to wear dresses and talk in baby lisps to a stuffed animal. More likely, she’d made it into a fort and plotted war games.

  “Good morning, Dana.” A short, square woman stood on the stoop next door.

  I stared in disbelief. Irene Stahlberg lived next door?

  Red-cheeked, black hair scraped tightly back from her plain features, Irene looked exactly as she had when Julie and I were growing up, even down to the floral housedress and the gold-wire eyeglasses perched on her pointy nose. She marched across the grass between the two houses, a bundle of flowers in one hand. “I have to say I’m surprised to see you, even given the circumstances. We all figured you were gone for good.”

  Irene had always been the sort to cut right to it. She didn’t throw her arms open for a hug. No false show of affection for her. In that one way, at least, we could agree.

  “Figured you had enough food.” Irene thrust the flowers at me. Old-fashioned pink roses. “Julie’s favorite,” she said, gruffly. “First of the season.”

  The Julie I had known had loved tulips with their jewel tones and curved shapes, but I could understand the appeal of these flowers with their tightly clustered petals and heavenly aroma. “They’re beautiful, Irene. Thank you. Would you like some coffee? Everyone’s still asleep, but . . .”

  “Maybe just half a cup. Before I head in to work.”

  Reluctantly, I held open the screen door. Couldn’t she tell my offer had been purely polite, without a tinge of genuine welcome? I’d been enjoying the solitude, the first few moments of peace I’d had in weeks. But this was Julie’s house; my sister would have wanted me to invite her neighbor in for coffee. “Are you still at the high school?” I asked, quietly shutting the door behind us.

  “You betcha.” Irene pulled out the coffeepot. “Administrative assistant to the principal.”

  Her pride was unmistakable, her voice loud and carrying. I wished she’d lower it. I’d only had half a cup of coffee, nowhere near the amount I needed to withstand the day. And I certainly wasn’t ready to withstand another confrontation with Frank. “Congratulations.”

  Irene ignored me. She was staring into the refrigerator. “My heavens.”

  “Take some of it. Please. Everyone’s been so generous—”

  “Better not. You’ll need it for the funeral. Though I imagine people will be bringing more by for that.”

  I’d forgotten that after our mother died, Julie and I had been deluged with wild rice soup and macaroni and ham hotdishes. I hadn’t eaten ham since.

  She withdrew the creamer and added a dollop to her cup. “Is it true what I hear? That you’re not a medical doctor?”

  She had me trapped in amber, the girl she’d once known, with a girl’s impossible dreams. “Guess I’m too squeamish.”

  Irene eyed me. “Too restless, I’d say.” She settled herself at the kitchen table. “The vases are beneath the sink.”

  Sure enough, there they were, pushed alongside the box of dishwasher soap and spray bottles of cleaners.

  “I’m glad to have a moment alone with you, Dana. I wanted to see how Peyton is doing.”

  I thought back to the night before, and the shuddering slam of the bedroom door that had silenced and shamed both Frank and me. “I think she’s all right.”

  “I’m worried about her. The shock of it all. We really expected Julie to pull through this infection. There was just no warning. One day she was making plans to come home and the next day, I get a call from the hospital.” Irene pressed her lips together and stared into her cup.

  I was moved. She had loved my sister. I’d been overly harsh, overly judgmental.

  Irene cleared her throat. “Peyton’s such a quiet girl. Is she talking to you? Has she said anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ah, that’s just too darned bad. I was hoping. . . . After all, she’s not the most popular girl. She doesn’t cheerlead and she’s not on any teams.”

  “Cheerleading’s not the only way to make friends.”

  Irene hiked an eyebrow. Perhaps I had sounded defensive.

  “She seems perfectly normal to me,” I said, amending.

  “She’s a very serious girl. And she’s got peculiar interests. The coral reefs, global warming, the energy crisis. The only thing she wanted for Christmas was a subscription to Science magazine.”

  “Being serious isn’t such a terrible thing. At least she’s involved in the world around her.” At Peyton’s age, I’d been interested in one thing, and one thing only. Joe. I set the vase on the kitchen table.

  “Yes, well, you’re not a teenager.”

  I looked up. “She’s not being bullied, is she?”

  “No, not that I know of. She does spend time with Eric Hofseth.”

  “Hofseth. That name sounds familiar.”

  “Sure. You remember them. They moved to town back when you were in high school. Nice family. Mitch works at the plant. Anna runs the church daycare. Eric’s their middle child.”

  And he was Peyton’s friend. Her only friend, or her boyfriend? I decided I wanted to meet him. “How’s Walter?” An affable old guy who let his wife do all the talking and socializing. He’d had a thing for fixing bikes. There was always one in disrepair leaning against their porch or lying on their driveway, even in the winter with the snow heaped all around it.

  She flapped a hand. “Driving me crazy, as usual. He retired a couple years back, decided to take up golf, a fool sport if you ask me. Ronni and Sam got married. Maybe you remember him. Any day now we’re hoping to hear she’s expecting.”

  “That’s nice. I know she always wanted to have a family.” Every time I babysat, Ronni insisted we play house. I’d be the dad; she’d be the mom, and her Barbie dolls would form a weird ring of children that constantly clamored for her attention by sprawling their long legs or bashing at one another with their stiff arms. The only way I could get any peace was to bribe her with Saturday Night Live and popcorn.

  “I imagine you’ve heard about LT’s troubles?”

  I had to give Irene credit. She was as direct talking about her own problems as she was delving into other people’s. “A little.”

  “I keep waiting and hoping for him to get better, but of course that’s not going to happen. You don’t see it when they’re growing up. You think everything’s going to be fine.” She shook her head and held her cup to her lips, stained with a pale pink lipstick too youthful for her weary face. “He lives in a group home now, with a supervisor, but I still worry.”

  “I’m so sorry, Irene.”

  “It is what it is. So tell me: How long can you stay?”

  “I’m leaving right after the funeral.”

  “But you’ll be back.”

  Her expectation was plain: now that I h
ad come back, I should come back regularly. “Sure.” Even I heard the insincerity in my voice.

  “Dana. That little girl needs you.”

  How could Peyton need someone she didn’t even know? And since when did Irene think I was someone worth needing? “She has Frank.”

  Irene leaned forward, lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Maybe you haven’t heard, you’ve been gone so long, but Frank has had a few problems.” She jerked her chin toward the counter where the cardboard case sat on its side. “Tell me that isn’t his.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He swore off the stuff, you know. Promised Julie he’d stay sober. Went to AA for years. But just the other night, Walter saw him in a bar, and he wasn’t drinking pop.”

  “How long has this been a problem?” Why had Julie put up with it for even one minute? But even as I asked myself that, I knew the answer. Julie would have put up with anything to keep Frank from leaving. Damn our father.

  “Since he came back from the Middle East. A friend died in his arms. He doesn’t talk about it.”

  How horrible. I’d had no idea. But now he was drinking again. I felt the first stirring of doubt.

  “I hope you’ll change your mind about staying.” Irene levered herself up. “Someone needs to keep an eye on things here. And who knows? You might find that Black Bear isn’t such a terrible place to live after all.”

  Ha. The chances of that were the same as a snowflake in a furnace. I watched Irene make her way across the thin grass, certainty in her gait. She’d delivered her message and expected it to be heeded. But I’d had good reason to leave town, and that reason hadn’t changed.

  A man strode into the hospital room. Tired green scrubs, receding hairline, tanned features. Hello there, he said. I’m Dr. Swenson.

  I’d never seen him before in my life.

  The nurse moved aside. I’m concerned about the baby’s heartbeat.

  What did that mean? I tried to push myself up onto my elbows, but another wave rolled up my body and pressed me against the pillow. Julie wasn’t looking at me. She was frowning at the monitor.

  The doctor seated himself behind my bent knees and disappeared from view. How far along are you?

  She’s thirty-seven weeks, Julie told him.

  Hmm, he said.

  What did that mean? That didn’t mean anything.

  Julie was there, her hand on my shoulder. It’s okay.

  But it wasn’t okay. I could see it on her face. I want Mom, I whimpered.

  I know, sweetie.

  The labor nurse stood. Time to push.

  Pain squeezed, left me floppy. I can’t.

  Honey, the nurse scolded, the only way this baby’s coming out is if you push.

  Julie gripped my hand. We’ll count.

  Counting didn’t work. The ceiling tiles swam above me. I rose toward them.

  Dana? Julie’s voice came from far away.

  I looked for her, found her watching me.

  One, two, three—

  The number climbed. I grunted and bore down.

  That’s it, the doctor said.

  The nurse whisked a paper sheet over my chest as the doctor lifted the baby out and up. Congratulations, I heard him say. You have a daughter.

  A daughter who was now sleeping in her bedroom down the hall, thirty feet away.

  For sixteen years, I’d dreamed about her, wondered. I’d moved as far away from her as I could to keep myself from rushing to take her back. How many times had I picked up the phone to call Julie, only to set it back down? Now, of course, it was too late. Julie was dead. Peyton had grown up as someone else’s daughter.

  Turning, I found Frank standing behind me.

  EIGHT

  [PEYTON]

  THE ABYSS LIES MILES BELOW THE OCEAN SURFACE. No sunlight penetrates. Temperatures hover just above freezing. The pressure’s profound. A person would be crushed to death long before they even reached this hidden zone.

  Interesting things happen to creatures that live here. They either go miniature or they get gigantic. No one’s sure why. Shrimp can be a quarter inch or a foot long; a squid that’s an inch in the upper part of the ocean will be forty feet long in the abyss. They have flexible skeletons or jelly bodies, reproduce at a slow rate, and may or may not have eyes. But the most intriguing quality of all is how they can go long periods of time without food or company.

  It’s got to be lonely down there in the deepest part of the world, but they don’t mind. They don’t know any different.

  Voices dragged her up through the layers of sleep, punched through the thin walls of her bedroom to where Peyton lay with her covers mounded around her. Sharp and angry, her dad and Dana going at it again in the kitchen.

  “. . . drinking again,” Dana was saying.

  “None of your business.”

  Peyton halted in the hallway, her sweater half pulled on. Chances were, her dad would think it wasn’t her business, either.

  “Irene said you’d been in AA. Maybe you should go to a meeting today.”

  Was the whole town talking about her dad’s drinking? Peyton stalked into the kitchen. Her dad stood by the coffeemaker, Dana by the window. It was as though they hadn’t moved from the night before, as if they’d battled all night long. The room felt stale from their fighting.

  “Don’t you guys ever give it a rest?” Stomping over to the refrigerator, she pulled it open and pretended to be interested in its contents. Her stomach flipped at the sight of milk, cheese, bottles of ketchup and salad dressing, endless containers of crazy sorry-your-mom-is-dead food. She waited for her dad to say something, but it was Dana who spoke.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  The room felt better after she left, familiar again. Peyton let the refrigerator door wheeze closed. Her dad hadn’t shaved. His face was puffy and his shoulders slumped. “She’s right, Dad. You used to go to meetings all the time.” He’d always come back quiet and withdrawn.

  “I will.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  He certainly didn’t convince her. “It’s been months, Dad.”

  “I said I would.” The newspaper snapped open.

  Fine. She grabbed a box of crackers from the pantry. Cheddar goldfish, the kind her mom used to get when Peyton was a kid. Dana must’ve picked it up. She’d probably scanned the grocery store shelves and thought they looked like something Peyton would eat. She tore open the package, aware of her dad rustling the paper behind her.

  “Two days,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  She nodded at the half-empty case of beer cans beside the sink. It would never have dared make an appearance while her mom was alive, and Peyton had even gone with her dad to get it. It felt like the unraveling of something, and both she and her dad were taking turns picking it apart. “We can’t even get through two days without Mom.”

  Carrying a handful of crackers, she went to her room, sat cross-legged on her unmade bed, and reached for her cellphone.

  Fingernails scratched against the mesh screen. Peyton rolled over on her bed and peeped through the blinds. Eric stood on the other side of the window.

  She met him at the back door. “It’s okay. No one’s home.” Dana was still on her walk, and her dad was out buying the wrong flowers for the funeral. She knew better than to hope he’d found an AA meeting. Not that her dad would care that Eric was over. In his present state of mind, he wouldn’t notice that Eric was playing hooky. “Let’s sit out here.”

  She pulled over one of the plastic lawn chairs and propped her bare feet up on the railing.

  “Sorry I took so long. I would’ve got here sooner, but Connolly caught me.”

  “Ugh. Don’t talk about him.” The sun warmed her legs and the top of her head, fell along her arms like a golden cloak, wreathing her in light, and keeping the darkness climbing the walls of her house inside, where it belonged.

  “I thought you liked Connolly.”

  His arm
rested on the armrest beside hers, the muscles in his forearm thick, leading to the tender curve of the inside of his elbow, up to the point where the biceps bunched. She could remember when his arm was thin and hairless and looked exactly like her arm. Now it was like they were two different species. “He and Dana were drooling all over each other last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My dad was so pissed off.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. They got into a huge fight. It was crazy.”

  A little brown bird hopped hopefully along the rim of the old birdbath. He shook himself, then flew away.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Dana? It’s weird. She’s always staring at me. And she stays up all night. Her light’s always on.” She didn’t know why that bothered her so much.

  The corner of his mouth crooked. She knew what he was thinking: that in order for her to have known that, she had to have been up, too. Whatever. “My aunt Karen’s coming for the funeral.”

  “The one in California?”

  Like she had a million aunts. Until Dana arrived, Peyton had just had the one. Her aunt Karen was sweet and nice and uncomplicated. She spoke softly and always made Peyton’s mom laugh and Peyton’s dad relax. Even so, it was going to be awful having her there. She’d only make Peyton realize just how small her family had become. “She’s bringing my little cousins.” Two boys who yelled and fought over everything, two people Peyton couldn’t believe were actually related to her. Her uncle wasn’t coming; he was too busy doing lawyer stuff. So this was it, a couple of people, gathering around for the tragedy.