Light from a Distant Star (12 page)

She threw back her head and laughed as if that were the funniest thing she’d ever heard, as if no one had ever said that to her before, which made Nellie feel weird, even more uneasy than her crying had. She said she’d better get going. There was a concert in the park this afternoon, and they were all going to walk there, she explained. All except Ruth, that is, though she didn’t tell Dolly that. If they went in the car, Ruth said she’d go, but their whole family walking together was just way too lame.

“Wait!” Dolly said. She raced into her bedroom, returning with a large pink-and-blue bag. She took a floppy orange sunhat from it and a receipt fluttered to the floor. Nellie picked it up. The hat had red polka dots and an orange-and-white flower tucked into the red ribboned band.

“It’s yours! For making me laugh. You’re just too cute,” Dolly said, plunking it down on her head. Perfect for a concert in the park. She’d bought it at a fancy boutique in Hyannisport, she said, fussing with Nellie’s hair, trying to arrange it under the hat.

“It’s nice.” Nellie didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “But it’s way too expensive,” she said, glancing at the receipt. Ninety-nine dollars. “My mother—she’d never let me keep it.” The scribbled signature caught her eye. The first name was illegible, but the last looked like Cooper.

“How’s this then,” Dolly said, taking the slip. “You can borrow it. Anytime you want—it’ll be fun.”

“But I might wreck it or lose it or something,” Nellie said. “And it’s special, like a souvenir, right?” She wanted to see the receipt again, but Dolly had dropped it into the bag. Maybe Cooper was the name of the store.

“Here’s the best one, though, best souvenir of all.” Dolly lifted the back of her shirt. On the fiery skin just above her tailbone was the tattoo of a small blue star.

“Oh.” Not knowing what else to do or say, she shrugged.

“Matches: east, west,” Dolly laughed, pointing, breast to breast. “Now, I just gotta get north.”

“Yeah. Well, anyway, I better go. They’re probably looking for me,” Nellie said, fearing what might be shown next. And then as she opened the door, Dolly asked the strangest question. So what was Claudia Cooper like? One of those worlds-colliding questions, it took Nellie a moment.
Claudia? Like, Jessica’s mom, Claudia? Mr. Cooper’s wife, Claudia?
Oh. “Very nice,” she said. “She’s always smiling.” Though how that could be with Jessica for a daughter she had no idea but, of course, didn’t say that. “And they have seven kids,” she added, for that was always mentioned whenever the Coopers’ name came up. Whether because it made them special, somehow more blessed than everyone else, or whether it was explanation enough, she’d never been sure, maybe both.

“Is she pretty?” Dolly asked so apprehensively that, for some reason, Nellie could not tell the truth—that, in fact, she was beautiful.

“She’s okay. You know,” she said with a shrug. It seemed to be the right answer.

S
O THERE IT
was. Inklings. But of what she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t wait for Jessica to get home from camp, though her reasons were purely nosy.

T
HE LIVING ROOM
and dining room were fragrant with vases of her mother’s peonies and roses. Preparations had begun the minute she ran in from work: extra chairs carried into the living room, linen on the dining room table, Grandmother Peck’s cut glass punch bowl and ladle washed and dried, the dainty cups arranged on its mirrored base. And candles everywhere, even in the bathroom. Thanks to Ruth, Nellie had already gotten in trouble for dipping her fingers into the melted wax, so she could peel it off, but they were soon kept busy, answering the door for the ladies in their pretty summer dresses, passing hors d’oeuvres, and keeping the white wine chilled in the ice buckets. Benjamin and Henry had gone to a movie. Boys’ night out, her father said. Her mother looked so pretty. Lizzie had come early to do her makeup. She did Ruth’s, too. Nellie got lip gloss, which tasted like strawberry soap.

Fifteen ladies came, though twenty-eight invitations had been sent. At first her mother was disappointed, but the party turned out to be a success. The ladies bought more than twelve hundred dollars’ worth of jewelry. Dolly spent the most, three hundred dollars on a necklace of chunky turquoise and glinting yellow stones with matching earrings and bracelet. Nellie thought it was pretty ugly, but Ruth called it bohemian, something an entertainer would wear. Nellie noticed how quiet Dolly was all through the party. She had on a red-and-white striped sundress that tied behind her neck, and her sunburn had darkened to a tan that made her look very glamorous with her streaky blond hair. In this setting a rare specimen, Nellie thought, like one of the Agassiz Museum’s exotic birds in its airless glass case. Compared to her, everyone else at the party just seemed so pale and drab. Dolly kept looking around at the other women, watching, as if she were studying them. Nellie heard her tell Miss Humboldt, from next door, how in New
York she’d been all set to audition for
The Producers
, but on the day of the tryouts she had “two of the biggest shiners you ever saw.”

Miss Humboldt seemed to be searching for the appropriate response. “That must have been a letdown,” she finally said.

“Yeah, I guess, but that’s how life is, right? Up one minute, down the next—you never know.”

“No, you don’t. You certainly don’t,” Miss Humboldt said, fingering the black-and-gold beads of the long necklace she’d bought. Nellie’s mother had been amazed when Miss Humboldt called to say she was coming. She and her brother never socialized, as Sandy put it. Nellie’s leafy surveillance of the Humboldts had fallen off lately. Dolly’s life had taken precedence. Compared to her, the Humboldts were dull. They went to the supermarket and drugstore, but that was about it. Even Mr. Humboldt’s evening gardening had lost its mystique.

Hard to believe that after all her years of spying on Miss Humboldt, here she was, ensconced in their living room, her doughy body filling the big easy chair. Surprisingly, she seemed just as normal as everyone else. She and Dolly made a unique pair as the night wore on, each seeming more grateful for the other’s company. Even as the party was breaking up, they kept talking. Ellen Heisler had packed up her jewelry display boxes and gone home, but Dolly and Miss Humboldt were still here. In the kitchen, Ruth was noisily loading the dishwasher, her signal for them to leave. The entire evening had been a forced march for Ruth, who kept disappearing with the phone into the bathroom. Nellie finished off the last of the pastries as she helped her mother clear the table. Limp mint leaves and orange slices floated in the frothy sherbet dregs of the punch bowl. There were eight empty wine bottles in the recycling basket. A lot of jewelry had been sold, and the ladies had all had a fine time, growing loud and silly by the end of the night. Nellie’s mother was pleased, but she looked really tired. She’d already put in eight hours at the shop, on her feet all day, and now these last two partiers wouldn’t leave.

Dolly continued to do most of the talking, growing only more animated, hands flying, her girlish voice pitched higher. She was telling Miss Humboldt about some guy her best friend was dating. Even though he was a lot older, like twice her age, he was so much fun. Last
week they went to Hyannisport for the day and rented this amazing boat and just floated around the harbor until sunset. Then they went to dinner at a little Portuguese restaurant, and she had white anchovies for the first time ever.

“White anchovies!” Miss Humboldt gasped. “Imagine.”

It hadn’t escaped Nellie’s notice that she had polished off an entire plate of finger sandwiches herself, declaring, with every reach, “I really shouldn’t.”

Her mother had turned out two of the three lamps. Well, Miss Humboldt announced with a great heave up from the chair, she’d best be on her way. Her brother was such a light sleeper and she didn’t want to get in too late and disturb him. Some nights he didn’t sleep at all, she said. The slightest sound, sometimes even leaves rustling in the wind, would keep him up.

Warm milk? Dolly suggested. Sleeping pills? Nothing works, Miss Humboldt said. Always been that way. Even as a baby, awake all night, never napping.

“Jeez,” Dolly said on their way into the kitchen to say good-bye to their hostess. “If I couldn’t sleep, I’d kill myself.”

A visible shudder tore through Miss Humboldt. “I’m very careful,” she said.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
Nellie’s parents were talking in the hallway on their way to bed. Her mother sounded upset, something about Dolly and the jewelry party, and she didn’t know how to handle it. “It’s the right thing to do,” her father kept saying, principle always the simplest measure of a solution. A few days later, when her mother went next door for the “talk,” Nellie was not only ready, ear at the wall, but for Dolly’s sake, praying she’d cleaned the place up.

Her mother began by saying that while it might not seem to be any of her business, in a way it was, both because of her friendship with Dolly’s aunt and because Dolly was her tenant, so she’d come to the conclusion that she had no choice.

“What?” Dolly shot back, without even knowing what Sandy was talking about. “What’d I do? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Nellie couldn’t believe her tone, worse than Ruth’s, almost vicious, but her mother didn’t sound angry. If anything, she was straining to be kind.

“I didn’t say you did. I’m just concerned, Dolly, that’s all. I mean, well, all your bills and your car out there, and your phone’s still shut off—”

“Yeah! Because I got my cell. That’s all I need!”

“I know, but what I’m trying to get at here, the point is, you’re hardly working, even your aunt’s—”

“Oh, okay! I get it, so that’s what’s going on. Well, you just tell Lizzie to butt the hell out!”

“Well, is it true? Are you? Are you still working or not? Are you still at the club? Did you get laid off? What?”

“I’m taking a little break, that’s all. I been getting these, like, spasms in my back so bad I can’t even—”

“Have you been to the doctor?”

“What do you care? I mean, fuck! I don’t get this!”

For Nellie, the silence was profound. “Dolly,” her mother finally said in a firm voice, “the other night at the jewelry party you spent three hundred dollars, and that was very sweet and so generous of you, but I can’t keep that money. Not in good conscience, not when I know how difficult things are for you right now. So, here. I’ll take the jewelry back, and this way you can pay some of your bills.”

“I like you a lot, Sandy, but right now I think you’re really stepping over the boundary line here.”

“I just want to help, that’s all.”

“No! I don’t need any help. Everything’s fine. I been saving, I got money. I just gotta get my act together, that’s all. I mean, I just moved. Look at this place. With my back, I can’t even bend over. I still don’t know where anything is here, my checkbook, the bills even.”

“Let me give you a hand then. I’ll go get Nellie. Between the two of us—”

Grinning, Nellie shot out of the bathroom, then sat in the front hall, waiting to be summoned. Instead, minutes passed, and when her mother did return, she looked upset. Nothing, was all she kept saying as Nellie followed her around, asking what was wrong. She couldn’t admit that she’d been listening. During Lazlo’s tenancy she’d gotten
caught in the act, along with Henry. Not only was eavesdropping a vile invasion of someone’s privacy, according to their father, but it was a loathsome character flaw, almost as bad as giving her younger brother such a poor example.

Her mother’s bad mood spilled over into the next day; she snapped at Henry and sent him to his room when he said he wasn’t going to the playground activities she’d already signed him up for and paid for. Things crashed and banged overhead—Henry trashing his room again, a desperate ploy that never worked and always got him in even more trouble. And then he’d just have to pick it all up, anyway. Nellie was almost enjoying the commotion. Earlier, when Ruth had been told to walk to work, she accused her mother of caring only about herself as she stormed out of the house in her brown Frostee Freeze uniform, slamming the door so hard the screen fell out. Yes, Nellie knew, compared to those two, she was a wonderful, loving child.

With the next crash, Benjamin bounded up the stairs. He so seldom ever raised his voice that now it seemed a thunderous shock, God roaring from the heavens at Henry to pick up everything in his room and when that was done, he was to come downstairs and apologize to his mother. And if he ever dared speak to her like that again, he could just pack his bags and go—the weakest of threats, in Nellie’s opinion. First of all, Henry had no bags to pack. He’d used his backpack and Ruth’s duffle bag to go to the lake, and second, there wasn’t a place on earth he’d ever have the guts to go to.

“Your mother’s got enough on her mind right now without having to put up with your nonsense!” he barked.

Nonsense. Henry had been guilty of far more than nonsense. But then, so was her father.

The night before, with the frantic banging of pipes in the cellar, had come the first of two cracks in her mother’s world. In a moment of misplaced confidence, Ruth began telling her mother about the letter she’d written to her “real father.”