Hope and Other Luxuries (10 page)

Nothing to worry about
. I let myself feel the relief of hearing him say that in his friendly voice.
Your daughter is completely normal
.

But if I hoped my relief would help me find a better way to deal with Elena, that hope turned into disappointment.

As the weeks passed, Elena's moods didn't improve, and Valerie wasn't doing much better either anymore. Each time they came home, they filled the house with fights and bitterness. And Elena's letters had already quit telling me stories. Now they quit coming altogether.

I still sent my stories to my girls, a chapter a week. But that became a new source of pain. Holt had bought four manuscripts from me now. I was a real professional author. But, far from being pleased at my new success, Valerie and Elena seemed to find it particularly galling. It was as if, in their unhappiness, they hated to see me feeling happy.

“I thought you wrote those stories for
us
, Mom,” Valerie told me in a scathing tone.

“Well, of course I did, you know that. They're dedicated to you. They have your names in them . . .”

“Oh, sure. Big deal!”

I lay awake and puzzled over these grim changes and ugly comments. But I didn't talk them over with Joe anymore. A new commander had showed up. So horrible was that man that he became a legend at our base. Joe was now lucky if his workday stopped after a mere twelve hours. Some days, it went on longer than that.

But this new work schedule didn't seem to be something Joe regretted when the girls were at home. I could feel him withdrawing from them, hiding away in naps and computer time.

What was happening to us? What had gone wrong?

Intense experiences . . . adolescent moods. Your daughter is completely normal
.

It must just be the school year, I decided. The girls were in high school now, in a foreign language, and for some reason, this year was just harder. They were getting burned-out. It would get better when they had their summer break. They could rest and recharge. They could re-center.

But when the summer break came, it brought us no relief. Valerie and Elena scarcely interacted. They were restless but had no energy. They found nothing interesting to do. Their rooms were little islands of boredom, and if they spoke, it was to fight.

One morning, I sat at the computer in the office and tried to write. Just last year, I had sat in this same spot and listened to happy voices laugh and sing together. “Write lots!” those voices had begged me . . .

Could that memory really be just one year old?

As if in answer to my gloomy thoughts, an argument broke out, rising in volume until I could make out the words.

“I
told
you! I told you not to mess with my stuff!”

“Bitch!”

“Hey!” I called. “Watch your language!”

I heard Elena stalk away and slam the door of her room.

I got up and went to the door that was still open. Valerie lay on her bed, reading a Stephen King novel.
Sie
, read the German title. Distracted, my imagination proposed different images to match it—the word could mean
it, her, them
, or
y'all
.

I shook off the linguistic puzzle and focused on what mattered.

“You need to not fight with your sister!” I said.

Valerie turned a page. “You heard her, Mom. She was fighting with me.”

“I know that. But you need to think before you go answering and calling her names. She's your sister. She's the only sister you'll ever have!” I thought about how empty my life had been, with my own sister dead. “She's family. You're so lucky to have her!”

Valerie set down her book and held it open with one hand. “Come on, Mom,” she said with devastating practicality. “It's not like Elena and I have a single thing in common. I don't like her, and she doesn't like me.”

“But you look after each other!” I insisted. “Different or not, that's what sisters do. You're friends at school, right? You told me once that you and Elena had the same friends.”

Valerie appeared to weigh her words. I had the sense that she was the older one here.

“No, we're not friends,” she finally said. “Elena doesn't speak to me at school. And because she doesn't do it, her friends don't do it, either. None of them ever speaks to me.”

“What? That isn't right . . .”

I thought about visits home in the past, when I'd heard my two girls merrily gossiping about their friends. It had been a long time since I'd heard talk like that.

But—not talking at all?

“That can't be right!” I said. “Not ever?”

Elena used words like
ever
and
never
. But Valerie wasn't my dramatic girl. Valerie didn't exaggerate the truth.

“We're not friends, Mom,” she concluded. “I don't care if we're sisters or not.” And she lifted the book and went back to reading.

I stared at the enigmatic cover.
Sie
in big green letters.
Her. You. It. Y'all. They
. That cover was short-circuiting my brain.

Without a word, I slunk back to my keyboard.

It wasn't right. It was wrong. It was terribly wrong. Moods were one thing, but not pushing away a family member—not shutting her out completely . . .

Your daughter is completely normal
.

I sighed and went back to my writing.

An hour later, Elena emerged from her room, rumpled, sleepy, and cross.

“Hey, there,” I said with false good cheer. “Do you want to read this new short story? I just finished it.”

“Oh, God, Mom!” she groaned. “I'm not a child anymore!”

And she walked away.

I couldn't speak for the sudden pain that flooded through my soul. It wasn't just the hurtful words. It was her look—that lost, sick look.

The look of the changeling child.

Your daughter is completely normal
.

Normal.

The new normal.

W
hen the summer ended, I tried to have meaningful talks with each of my daughters. But those talks didn't get very far.

“Are you sure you want to go back to the boarding school?” I asked.

“Why wouldn't I?” Elena murmured. “I need to go pack now.” And she slipped away.

Valerie was a little more amenable to conversation, but when I asked her, she just shrugged. “It's as good as anywhere else,” she said.

This time, I drove them to school alone. With the maniac commander running things, neither Joe nor his bosses could afford to take time away from the office. And that wasn't the only change, either. There was no happy chatter from the backseat this year. Each of my daughters had ear-buds in her ears and was listening in silence to her own music.

I guess they don't need me anymore
, I thought sadly.
They don't need to talk to me or ask me things
.

But that didn't turn out to be true.

A couple of weeks after school started, I got a call. “Hey, Momma, it's Valerie.”

“Hey, hon, how are you doing? What's up?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

I waited, but Valerie seemed to have nothing further to add. So I filled her in on the small amount of news around the house—until the silence unnerved me, that is.

“So, how's class going?” I asked.

“Fine.”

“Do you like your new room?”

“It's okay.”

“How's that roommate of yours working out?”

“Okay, I guess. She doesn't spend much time in the room.”

I paused to give Valerie space to talk. But once again, the space just filled up with silence.

“So, how's your sister?” I asked after a minute.

“Okay, I guess.” Valerie's tone of voice indicated that she neither knew nor cared.

“Honey, what's the matter?” I said. “Something's wrong.”

Finally, a little color came into the voice on the other end of the line. “Nothing,” Valerie said, sounding slightly surprised. “Nothing's the matter, really.”

“So, what's going on, then?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice. Bye, Momma.”

I pondered the call that night as I lay in bed and reviewed my day. Maybe Valerie had had an argument at school. Maybe she'd gotten a bad grade and just needed a little comfort.

But a couple of weeks later, I got another call. And another one the week after that. Each time, they followed the same pattern—a pattern of emptiness.

“Please,” I said. “Honey, please. I know something's wrong. Please just tell me what's wrong!”

And each time I asked this, Valerie seemed just as surprised. “Nothing's wrong,” she assured me. “Don't worry, Momma.”

But I did.

At least Valerie still called on occasion. I didn't hear from Elena at all. Gone were the days of gushing letters full of news. But when the girls came home for their weekends, I could see that Elena, too, seemed to be running down to a stop, like a music box that needed rewinding. She didn't flare up in anger or bitterness that often anymore. It seemed to be too much trouble. Her white, pinched face seemed to be set permanently in a look of disgust—my chatterbox girl who had once been so in love with life.

“Do you know what's wrong with Valerie?” I asked her.

Elena curled her lip. “All she does at school is sleep!”

“You mean Valerie doesn't go to class anymore?”

“She goes to class, comes back to the room, and sleeps.”

This didn't sound good. Not at all.

“Honey,” I said to Valerie, “Elena says all you do at school is sleep.”

“So what? Momma, stop worrying!”

But I couldn't. Night after night, I lay awake, sifting through the evidence, pondering what I knew.

Your daughter is completely
 . . .

Well, fine. If my daughters were normal, then there must be something wrong with the school.

When I offered to take Valerie and Elena out of the boarding school, they both seemed glad to come home. Warmhearted and concerned, Sister tried to talk me into leaving them in the program there, but I could see from some of the housemothers' faces that they weren't sorry to see Elena go.

Maybe it was housemother trouble after all
, I thought hopefully.
Maybe this will finally get better
.

Both girls seemed so exhausted and miserable that I decided against enrolling them in another school right away. They could finish out the school year doing correspondence classes at home. Valerie was so close to graduation that she needed only a few more credits anyway.

I imagined the three of us, sitting in the office together, my girls and me. Valerie and Elena would be at the big worktable at the center of the room, bending over their schoolbooks, while I sat at the computer desk and typed out my prose. The loudest sound would be the scratch of a pencil or the clicking of the keyboard. The mood would be quiet, absorbed, and content. How could that not be pleasant?

It didn't turn out to be pleasant. Not at all.

From Day One, the girls' correspondence-school lessons were miserable for all of us. Elena tackled her work with reliable perfectionism, but she was grim and war-weary, and her eyes were full of shadows. The only thing that remained of her former bubbly idealism was a harsh and constant sense of frustration that nothing ever went right in this world.

Valerie appeared brighter and more accommodating, but I soon learned that this was just an act. Underneath Valerie's surface of cheerful nonchalance churned savage, vicious anger. If I left her alone to do
her work, she did absolutely nothing. Even when I nagged her, she did as little as possible.

“This is garbage, Valerie,” I said one morning as I proofread an essay of hers. “Take it back and do it over.”

“It's fine,” she said. “I'm good with it. Send it in.”

I grappled with my outrage and disappointment. This was my brilliant girl, my sunshiny baby. I had believed in her for years. My belief in her was so powerful, in fact, that it was almost a part of my religion. Valerie and Elena were going to be better people than I was—better in every way.

“Have a little pride!” I said. “Show what you can do!”

“I know what I can do,” she said. “I don't need to show anybody. Why should I care what some mythical teacher in Washington State thinks about me? Seriously, Mom! What difference does it make?”

I couldn't even answer. Not to do one's best work—how was that even possible? I wouldn't have been able to do shoddy work if I'd tried.

“Do it over!” was all I could say. “And do it right this time, or I take away your phone, and you're grounded.”

She snatched the essay out of my hand and sat back down at the worktable. Elena, doing her algebra on the other side of the table, didn't say a word, but I saw in her eyes the warm glow of schadenfreude. It seemed to be the only enjoyment Elena took from life these days.

Sighing, I set the grading folder aside and pulled up my email. A new message was waiting there, from “your biggest fan.” Perking up, I opened the email. It included six questions about my goblin world and a pencil drawing of Marak, stripy hair and all.

You know
, I thought,
that's really not bad!

A warm glow of pleasure spread through me. It was obvious that my world really lived for this young woman, and her questions made the world live again for me, too. I clicked reply and started thinking through the answers, typing as I went:

Concerning Question 1, about the cut on the goblin King's arm: it isn't a part of the marriage spells . . .

“Mom! What are you doing?”

Surprised, I glanced up. For a few minutes, I'd forgotten my daughters were there. Now I found that they were staring at me with accusing eyes.