“I can see close up,” I said. “Not very well at a distance.”
“You have such amazing eyes. Can I make them up?”
“I don’t have any makeup here.” And all I had in my room at home was blush and lip gloss.
“I have a ton in my backpack,” she said. “Let me do you. I’m really good at doing eyes. I have a supersteady hand.”
“Okay,” I said, wishing the light was better in the springhouse. Plus, the only mirror was a small frameless one attached to the wall above the sink.
We washed the Tupperware and then sat facing each other on the bed beneath the Johnny Depp posters. Stacy had pulled the floor lamp close to us and adjusted the shade. My eyeglass frames were large, a pale pink plastic I’d hoped would blend into my face and not be very noticeable, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. The glasses were probably the first thing people noticed about my face. Daddy said I could get contacts when I was sixteen, which was several lifetimes away. I took my glasses off now and offered Stacy my face.
“Hmm,” she said, studying me. “I can’t decide if I should cover your freckles with foundation or not. They’re kind of cute. Some boys really go for cute, you know?”
“Cover them over,” I said. I was curious to see myself without freckles for the first time in my life.
“Okay.” She’d taken an overstuffed makeup case from her backpack and when she opened it, bottles and tubes and compacts spilled out onto the brown bedspread. I’d never seen so much makeup. Even my mother had only a fraction of Stacy’s bounty.
“Wow,” I said.
Stacy picked up a bottle and began shaking it. “I love this foundation,” she said. “It covers zits and everything.”
I studied her perfect skin. “Do you have it on now?” I asked.
“No. I only use it when I see Bryan or when I break out.” She opened the top. “It smells good, too.” She held it under my nose. “Sniff.”
I did. “Nice,” I said, although I really didn’t smell much of anything other than the peaches on her breath.
“Let me dot this on. Close your eyes.”
I felt her fingertips smooth the liquid over my nose and cheeks.
“Oh, this is cool!” she said. “Wait till you see. This covers your freckles totally.” She finished with the foundation and I opened my eyes to see her pick up a small case of purple eye shadow from the bed. “I stole this,” she said, opening the case. She smoothed a foam-tipped applicator across the purple powder.
“From one of your sisters?” I asked.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
I shut my eyes and she began brushing the eye shadow over my lids.
“Not from my sisters, though some of this stuff is theirs. Or was theirs, anyhow.” She giggled. “No, I got this from a drugstore near my house.”
I opened my eyes. “You shoplifted it?”
“Close,” she commanded, and I shut my eyes again waiting for her to answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t do it a lot but this stuff is so expensive and it’s so easy just to slip in your pocket. You’ve never stolen anything from a store?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t have the guts to steal something. I’d get caught for sure.
“I can teach you how,” she said. “Open.”
I opened my eyes and looked into her face, and I saw a beautiful girl who looked so much older than me. I wasn’t sure if I envied her or feared her.
* * *
It took her half an hour to make me up, but I looked absolutely amazing by the time she was finished. I had to get close to the mirror to see her handiwork, and I finally took the mirror off the wall so I could stare at myself while I sat on the bed. “I don’t even look like myself,” I said.
“You look at least sixteen,” Stacy said as she loaded her bottles and pencils back into her makeup bag.
I thought she was right. I loved how I looked without freckles. And without glasses. Too bad the real me came with both.
She zipped her makeup bag closed. “I have to pee,” she said, getting to her feet. “Where’s the bathroom in this place?”
“Oh, it’s a latrine,” I said. “It’s outside. I have to go too, so I’ll show—”
“We have to go outside to use the bathroom?” Her eyes were open so wide that her lashes lifted her bangs.
“It’s not too far.”
“If I’d known that, I would’ve said we should stay in your house.”
“Put on your sandals,” I said, tying my tennis shoes. I slipped on my glasses. I hadn’t used the latrine in a few weeks and I remembered how overgrown the path was even then. By now, it would be impossible to find without my glasses, especially in the dark.
I grabbed a roll of toilet paper from the bottom drawer of the dresser, picked up the two flashlights from the counter and handed one of them to her. “Come on,” I said. “Just follow me.”
We stepped outside and the sound of the cicadas fell over us like a blanket of noise. I pointed my flashlight at the ground and could just make out the vine-covered path. Another week and it would be indiscernible from the forest floor. “Come on,” I said.
“Oh God.” The path was too narrow for us to walk next to each other, but she had a death grip on my arm from behind me. “Are there snakes out here?” she asked.
“Not at night,” I said.
“That is not reassuring!”
One of Morrison Ridge’s barred owls picked that moment to start its eerie howling and Stacy let out a scream and stopped walking completely, her fingernails digging into my bicep. “What is that?” she asked.
“Just an owl,” I said.
She seemed frozen in place. “I thought owls just said ‘who, who’?”
“They say all kinds of things.” I pointed the beam of my flashlight ahead of us. “Come on.” I moved forward and was relieved when she came along with me. I hoped the owl was the worst of what we’d hear. There were nights when, between the howling and screeching and soul-piercing animal screams, I was certain something was being killed in our woods. That’s all Stacy needed tonight.
After a minute or two, I spotted the wooden side of the latrine through the trees. “It’s just a little ways,” I said.
She followed me, sputtering against the cobwebs and bugs and complaining about the lack of a path, and we finally reached the latrine. It was ancient, the wooden door warped so that it wouldn’t close all the way, and one of the boards hung off the roof by a nail. I had no idea when it had been built. I carefully opened the door. There was no terrible smell like you might expect, since it was so rarely used. I shined my flashlight on the wooden plank with the hole in its center.
“Oh no,” Stacy said. “No way. Oh, this is the worst thing ever. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You just sit on the board and go,” I said. “Want me to go first?”
“First and last. I’ll hold it, thanks.”
I went inside and did my business and came out again. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “Go on. You don’t want to have to hold it all night.”
I could hear her teeth chattering and knew she was genuinely scared.
“Pretend you use this latrine all the time,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just pretend. I’m serious. You use it every day of your life. It’s no big deal. As a matter of fact, you’re really, really glad it’s here for you to use.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Try it,” I said. “You love this latrine. You love it as much as you love Joey McIntyre.”
She laughed. “Now you’re seriously sick.”
I had to laugh myself. At least her teeth were no longer chattering. “Please,” I said. “Just try it. Just pretend you love it. Say it. That you love it.”
“I love it,” she said.
“Excellent!”
“I love this fucking latrine!” she shouted, and she pulled open the door and went inside. I was so shocked that she said the f-word that I hardly realized
she was actually inside, sitting above that wooden hole, peeing.
“I need toilet paper!” she shouted.
I cracked the door open and handed it to her.
In another minute she was outside again, shuddering.
“You did it!” I said.
“And I hope I never have to do it again.”
We walked back to the springhouse. She was much calmer than she had been on our way to the latrine. I told her about Daddy’s Pretend Therapy as we walked.
“That’s crazy,” she said.
“Tell me it didn’t just work for you.”
“Well, I don’t really love it!”
“You love that it was here for you when you needed it.”
“He’s written actual books about pretending?”
“He doesn’t call it Pretend Therapy when he’s talking to other psychologists. He calls it Cognitive Behavioral Self-intervention. CBSI. But really, it’s all about the power of pretending.”
“That’s crazy,” she said again.
I thought about the two therapists Daddy shared his Asheville office with. One of them, Peter, also thought my father was crazy. Daddy didn’t think much of Peter’s approach to therapy, either. “Peter still thinks Freud hung the moon,” he’d complain, “but we love each other, anyway.” The other therapist in Daddy’s office, Janet, worshiped my father … at least according to my mother. Janet had come to Daddy as an intern, wanting to learn more about CBSI, and she’d stayed on with him and Peter in the office they shared after she got her license. I knew Janet and Peter—and Peter’s wife, Helen—pretty well. All three of them were really nice.
“And you help him write his books?” Stacy was asking.
“No, I type for him. He tells me what he wants to say and I type it.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s so cool.”
We were back at the springhouse. Step by Step was playing on the cassette player for the fourth or fifth time and we lay down on our beds. Suddenly, Stacy bolted upright, her eyes enormous, as she pointed to the floor by my bed. “Someone’s under there!” she mouthed. “We have to get out!” She’d put her flashlight next to her on the bed. Now she grabbed it and ran for the door.
“No one’s there!” I jumped up and ran after her. She’d already pushed the door open. Once I was outside with her, she shut the door and stood against it, pressing her body against the door so whoever she thought was inside wouldn’t be able to get to us.
“Seriously!” she said. “Someone was under your bed!”
“That’s insane,” I said. “No one would even fit under those beds. They’re too close to the floor.”
The owl picked that moment to start its eerie howling again and Stacy yelped.
“I want to go back to your house, Molly!” she said. “Please! Really. I’m scared. And don’t tell me to pretend! Someone is in there. They must have come in while we were at that stupid latrine.”
She was being ridiculous, but I could tell I wasn’t going to win this time. “Your backpack is still in there,” I said.
“We can get it tomorrow. I’m not going in there again.”
“I’ll get it.” I started to reach behind her for the doorknob, but she grabbed my arm.
“No! Don’t leave me out here alone.”
“All right.” I gave in. I pictured our long walk home in the dark, down the winding loop road, then inching our way down the Hill from Hell. But it looked like I had no choice.
Stacy hung on to my arm as we made our way along the path in the dark. She kept turning to look behind us and I nearly tripped over her feet a couple of times. I was relieved when we finally made it to the loop road. Almost immediately, though, I stopped walking. The beam of my flashlight had landed on something shiny on the road ahead of us.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“Where?” Stacy held my arm so tightly it hurt.
I took a step closer and knew exactly what I was looking at: the spokes on my father’s wheelchair. The chair was parked next to the bench my grandfather had built. My father sat on the bench, sound asleep, but he was not alone. Amalia sat sleeping next to him, her head on his shoulder, her hand wrapped around his where it rested on his thigh.
Stacy caught her breath. “That’s not your mother,” she whispered.
I nodded. “It’s Amalia,” I said quietly. “And look. They’re sitting here to watch over us. To be sure we’re safe.” I smiled to myself, touched that my father and Amalia had done this. “And we are safe,” I added, “so let’s go back, okay? They’re right here if we need them. I absolutely swear to you, there’s no one in the springhouse.”
“But…” She looked perplexed that I wasn’t finding the scene in front of us the least bit upsetting. That I seemed to actually find it a comfort. And I did. “She’s not your mother,” Stacy said again, “and she’s sitting with him like—”
“It’s okay,” I said. And I turned back toward the springhouse, glad when I heard her begin to follow me.
She grabbed my arm. “But that’s not your mother!” she said again. “Aren’t you even a little bit upset?”
I stopped walking and looked at her. “Actually,” I said, “that is my mother.”
9
Back at the springhouse, Stacy stood outside the open door while I showed her that it would be impossible for anyone to hide beneath our beds. I lifted the dusty bed skirt on one of the beds and shined my flashlight on the wooden platform that was no more than two inches from the floor.
“I could have sworn I saw fingers coming out from under your bed,” she said sheepishly as she inched her way back into the building.
We sat on the beds, our backs resting against the cool stone walls, and I told her about Amalia.
“She’s my birth mother,” I said. “She lives in the slave—” I caught myself. “She lives in this cool cabin between here and Nanny’s house. She’s the one I told you about who gives me dance lessons.”
“So … you’re adopted?”
“Well, only partly. My father’s my real … my birth father.” I wasn’t sure if that was the right term when talking about a man. “But my mother—the one you met. Nora. She adopted me. So I guess I’m half adopted.”
“This is mind-blowing,” Stacy said.
“Not really. Not to me. I mean, this is just my life.” I shrugged. No big deal. “Amalia’s lived here all my life and I’ve always known she was my birth mother, so it’s never been a big deep dark secret or anything.”
“But … I mean … she was, like, all over your dad!”
“She wasn’t all over him,” I said, annoyed.
“She was leaning on him and holding his hand. On his thigh!”
“They’re friends,” I said, although I had to admit, I’d never seen my father and Amalia that close before. Would it bother Mom, I wondered, seeing them like that? I wasn’t going to let Stacy know I suddenly had any doubts. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” I said.
Stacy leaned her head back against the wall and studied the beamed ceiling. “So, was your father married to your mother when he screwed Amalia?” she asked.
“What? No! Of course not!” Had he been? How did it happen? I suddenly realized there were pieces of the story I didn’t know. Questions I’d never thought to ask.
“My father had an affair,” Stacy said quietly. “That’s why he and my mom split up. It was disgusting, picturing him doing it with this other woman. She was, like, practically my sister’s age.”
I tried to imagine my father kissing Amalia. Lying in a bed with her, back when he was healthy. Having sex with her. I felt sick. I didn’t want to think about it.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said. “Did you bring your magazines with you?”
She looked at me hard for a moment and then gave in. Reaching for her backpack, she pulled out a stack of Teen Beat and Sassy magazines. She brought them over to my bed and we sat side by side, turning the pages, studying photos of the bo
ys in the bands—those cute, safe-looking guys who I could imagine kissing but little more than that—and I tried hard to erase the new thoughts and images that were suddenly fighting for space inside my head.
* * *
Stacy slept to the muffled hum of the cicadas, but I was awake for most of the night, my mind blazing. At some point, I thought, either during the night or early in the morning, Russell would drive the van up the hill and take my father home. Would he see Amalia or would she leave before he arrived? I didn’t think she would leave him alone. It wasn’t easy for Daddy to sit upright like that without support. He could easily topple over. Did Russell know she was with my father? Did Mom know? The fact that I knew was disturbing enough and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was it possible that Daddy had cheated on my mother with Amalia? Amalia is your birth mother. Nora adopted you. I’d known that from the time I was small. I realized now there had to be far more to the story, and I was going to have to find out what it was.
10
San Diego
How could a letter be so hard to write?
Our “Dear Expecting Mother” letter is the last thing we have to do to make our application one hundred percent complete. Until we do it, there is no chance of that call telling us we’ve been matched. I am the one slowing us down and I’ve run out of excuses.
We sit on the deck, Aidan’s laptop on his knees as we try to compose the letter that will create our family. The screen is bothering him in the sunlight and he keeps taking off his sunglasses, then putting them back on. But he doesn’t complain. He’s focused on our task.
“We should try for a playful tone,” he says. “Lighthearted.”
“I think we should be factual,” I say. “Talk about our work and the problems we had trying to have a baby and what our lifestyle is like and what we can offer a child, et cetera.”
“Boring,” he says. “Picture some fifteen-year-old girl trying to slog her way through a letter like that. It needs to be catchy.”
I stare at our yard. From where I sit, I have a clear view of the little swing set my father-in-law built for us, but I’m not really seeing it. Instead, I’m imagining a scared teenaged girl searching uncertainly through a stack of “dear expecting mother” letters, trying to find the right person to raise her child. It’s the first time I’ve truly let myself envision that girl. Poor thing, I think. Was Amalia frightened when she discovered she was pregnant with me? I wonder.