The Good Sister (13 page)

“Put her in the car and drive around until she falls asleep.”

Franny stopped pacing and looked at Simone with what felt like a challenge. “Are you going to watch the twins?”

“Where’s my mother?”

“She left about an hour ago.”

“It’s not even noon! Where did she go?”

“You know I can’t ask her that, Simone.”

Franny’s tone said,
She’s your mother, you ask her.

It seemed to Simone that Franny never said just one thing straight-out; a second meaning always swam beneath her words.

She added
sneaky
to the list of Frances Biddle’s faults.

Franny blew back a lock of straw-blond hair that had fallen across her cheek. Her strong arms and legs, tanned and freckled
after a summer lolling beside the Durans’ swimming pool, were an affront to Simone.

Franny shifted Olivia to her other shoulder. “I called the pediatrician and told his nurse she has to have something stronger.
I wanted to give her a double dose but the nurse gave me a mini-lecture about how the crying’s worse for us than for Olivia.
Don’t you think that’s insensitive? I mean, being miserable all the time? It
can’t
be good. I practically had to bribe her, but she finally said she’d make room for you at three-thirty.”

“Me? Today?” Simone wished she had stayed in her room, her sanctuary.

“We were lucky,” Franny said. “He had a cancellation.”

“I’ve already been out today.”

Franny opened her mouth and then shut it. “Omigod, I forgot. What did the OB say?”

Simone stared at Franny as if she were speaking Martian.

“The baby’s okay?”

From the tot lot beside the house the twins’ squeals scraped Simone’s eardrums like the tines of a fork. She dropped onto
the hassock near the sectional and let her head fall forward between her knees.

“Oh. Another girl? I’m so sorry, Simone. Really. I know you wanted—”

“I am not going into another doctor’s office today. You’ll have to do it.”

“He won’t see me.”

Dr. Omar had a waiting list of young families, all of them apparently willing and grateful to drop everything for an appointment.
He would not deal with nannies under any circumstances.

“You saw my mother leave? What was she wearing? Was she dressed up?”

“She looked fantastic.”

“Call her cell, tell her there’s an emergency and she has to come home.”

Olivia’s sweat and tears had left a damp spot on Franny’s white T-shirt. “It’s not my place.”

“Your place, my place, whatever.” Lazy and insubordinate: the tally of Franny’s faults had grown so long
Simone would have to write it down or she’d forget. Simone wanted to confront her; but the way she felt now, she couldn’t
pull it off. If she wasn’t lying down in the next five minutes, she was going to fold in the middle.

“I have a headache, Franny.”

“You’re probably dehydrated.” Franny leaped on the idea. “That makes for a wicked bad headache. Get a glass of water and go
on upstairs. I’ll bring you some lunch when I feed the girls. That’ll give you time for a nap after and I’ll wake you at two.”

Bossy as a cattle prod.

“We can load everyone into the Cayenne and all go to Mission Bay when you’re done at Dr. Omar’s.”

“I told you I’m not going to the damn pediatrician. And don’t look at me like that. You’re the nanny. You’re supposed to take
care of these things. Make a pest of yourself and she’ll give you what you want just to shut you up.”

They both knew this would not work.

“Tell the nurse you’re me. She’s so busy she won’t know the difference. It’s not a crime. I’m giving you my per—”

Simone heard a scream, the sound of running feet on gravel, and she turned toward the stairs. She didn’t want to know what
had happened outdoors; she couldn’t stand to be in the room and listen to the twins and Merell pick at each other. But before
she could get across the family room, Merell hurtled through the French doors and announced that whatever had happened, it
wasn’t her fault.

“Victoria fell off the merry-go-round, but I didn’t do anything. She wouldn’t hang on.”

“You lie!” Valli shoved Merell. “She did it, Franny. It was her. I hate Merell.” She kicked her sister’s shin.

“Stop it, you two!” Franny transferred Olivia from her shoulder to her hip. “No kicking, Valli.”

Simone stared at her daughters, frantic little banshees always running and yelling and crying and complaining. The sight and
sound of them disgusted her in a way that went deeper than simple dislike. Her whole body needed to reject them, almost as
if its survival depended on escaping the contagion they carried. At that moment Victoria wailed in from outdoors and threw
herself against Simone’s legs, almost knocking her over.

Merell said, “I didn’t do anything wrong, Mommy.”

“She pushes too fast,” Valli said.

Their voices had fingers, fingers with claws prying up Simone’s skull section by section as if it were an orange.

Merell said, “If I go slow on the merry-go-round they yell, so I said I’d push fast one time and they had to hold on but Victoria
didn’t.”

“I hate you, Merell.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Shut up!” Simone covered her ears with her hands. “Right now, all of you!” Her hand shook as she pointed in the direction
of the stairs. “You, Merell, get up there and close your door. Don’t come down until your father gets home.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong. What about lunch? Don’t I get any lunch? I’m starving.”

Franny said. “It’s no trouble for me to take something up to her.”

“Why do you undercut everything I try to do?”

“I’m sorry, Simone.” Franny stepped back, obviously surprised by Simone’s response. “I just don’t think—”

“I don’t care what you think.”

Franny shut her lips tight and followed Merell toward the stairs. “Olivia’s wet. I need to change her diaper.”

“You think I’m a bad mother.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t!”

Merell and the twins watched, their eyes glistening with curiosity. Even the baby had stopped crying and was attentive to
the argument. For several breaths no one said anything. Simone could see that Franny was trying to control her temper, and
it pleased her to get a reaction from the normally unflappable paragon.

“I don’t think you’re being fair, Simone.”

The girl measured each word as if she were speaking with a child prone to tantrums. Her condescension made Simone feel small
and stupid.

Franny said, “You ask me to lie to the doctor’s nurse and in almost the same breath you punish Merell because you think she’s
lying.”

“Since when did you get so honest?”

The girl’s round face went red. “Simone, I love your children and I’m glad for this job—”

“I guess you better be. We pay you a lot of money—not to mention certain
bonuses
—and from where I’m standing I don’t see you doing much to earn it.”

“You’ve had bad news this morning. I’d be upset too. Can we talk about this later, when you’re feeling better?”

Simone held her breath and shut her eyes. For a moment she felt as if she were still upstairs, fast asleep and dreaming. A
nightmare had chased her into a cul-de-sac at the top of a mountain, and now there was nowhere to go but back or over the
edge of a cliff. Fly: the word sang in her thoughts and suddenly she was wide awake and alert. Strange how that happened,
how in the space of a breath she went from confusion to a wonderful clarity. One moment before she’d been blind and now she
could see.

“Frances, get out. You’re fired.”

H
untington Lake had been a disaster, Roxanne could think of it in no other way; and capping the weekend in a glorious disregard
for any needs and desires she might have, there was Johnny’s request that she sacrifice her career on the altar of Simone.
She didn’t know what was worse, the request itself or his obvious sense of entitlement when he made it.

But if Huntington had been terrible, her homecoming had been even worse. Needing a hug and a sympathetic shoulder on which
to unload the details of the miserable weekend, she found Ty asleep on the couch, unappealingly grungy in sweats and two days’
beard. The kitchen was a mess of unwashed dishes, and four messages blinked red on the answering machine. Roused, he was in
a foul mood with smiles and hugs only for Chowder. The weekend’s experiment had gone poorly—don’t ask him why because he didn’t
fucking know—and been terminated late Saturday night.

“Lately, I can’t seem to pick a winner.”

He’d come home to an empty house, not even Chowder to commiserate with. Obviously, he had wanted her to say she was sorry
for not being there when he needed her; but her heart was heavy with her own problems so, though she made the effort, it was
unenthusiastic. When he seemed somewhat mollified, she told him about her own weekend, not bothering to be either funny or
philosophical as she related the weekend’s many low points, at the same time dumping her laundry and cleaning the kitchen.

He wasn’t listening to her.

“What’s the matter?”

“Go on, I’m all ears.” He was at the kitchen counter, sorting through a pile of catalogs, most of them addressed to her.

“What was the last thing I said?”

“Let me make a wild-ass guess. You were talking about your sister?”

“Well, I’m sorry if I’m boring you.” The plastic bottle of dishwashing liquid slipped from her hands and bounced on the kitchen
floor, spreading a pool of gooey green. “Fuck!”

“Yeah, right.”

He grabbed his keys off the hook by the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Lab.”

“But you said there’s nothing—”

“Don’t wait up, Roxy. I’m not gonna want to talk.”

The next morning he was up early and out before her alarm went off at six, taking Chowder with him. She banged around the
house feeling sorry for herself—no dog, no husband, a quarter inch of milk in the bottom of the carton. On the way to school
she stopped for coffee and succumbed to the temptation of a doughnut and now, the roof of her mouth furred with sugar, baking
soda, and powder, and her stomach glurking, she wished she hadn’t and blamed Ty for ruining what should have been a great
morning.

Balboa Middle School occupied the oldest school complex in San Diego. In Roxanne’s wing there was no air-conditioning, but
the wall of windows in Room 110 could be cranked open using a long pole with a hook on the end. Four ceiling fans with ten-inch
paddles moved the air. Circulating air and a wall of natural light were advantages Roxanne appreciated every day. She believed
she was a better, more patient teacher because she could see the sky and trees from wherever she stood in the room.

But it was going to take more than air and light to make her a good teacher today. On a typical first morning it wasn’t hard
to be enthusiastic and positive; but this time all she thought about was the negatives. She had thirty-five names to learn,
a new aide to train, mandated diagnostic tests, small uprisings to quell, and technology to contend with. Cell phones of all
descriptions: OFF.
BlackBerries and Apples and any other fruit: OFF. No e-mail. No texting. No surfing. No Twittering. There was no end to the
possible mischief.

She checked her phone to see if there was a message from Ty. Nothing.

When all the days of the school year were considered, minus Mondays and Fridays and holidays and the days leading up to them
and immediately following, she had decided that real learning took place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between Christmas
and spring break. The first day of the year was mostly housekeeping and Roxanne had learned to set reasonable goals for herself
and to be sustained by small victories. Her ambition on this day, if she could summon the energy and manage to do it with
a smile on her face, was to speak privately to each student. The boy slouched on the chair beside her desk was number eleven.
Great. Only twenty-four to go.

She had known countless surly adolescents like this one, a rangy black kid with a good start on a mustache. He would be handsome
in a few years, but at the moment none of his parts and features matched. The note on his record said he was
morose
and
uncommunicative,
which was about normal for a thirteen-year-old male. She only wanted eye contact with this boy. A smile wasn’t even on her
wish list.

“You look sleepy, Ryan. Are you tired?”

He shrugged. They all shrugged. In every teenage
demographic it was the same: body odor, bad skin, and the shrug.

And none of them slept enough. Roxanne’s kids shared their bedrooms with siblings, pets, telephones, and televisions and computers.
She was afraid to ask what else. Many, perhaps most, had
never
had regular bedtimes and probably hadn’t been well rested since they learned to climb out of the crib.

“If you talk to me it’ll be easier for both of us. We don’t know each other—”

He looked up. “I know you.”

Roxanne often taught siblings and cousins. The unfamiliarity of Ryan’s last name, Moline, meant nothing. Over the years there
were divorces and adoptions, foster homes, stepfamilies; and sometimes boys and girls just arbitrarily changed their names.

“My cousin was in your class. Taryn.” His jaw squared. “She got shot.”

At orientation, the guidance counselor had told the faculty about a teenage girl, once a student of Roxanne’s, shot in her
own living room where no one had noticed she was watching television.

Ryan shifted his buttocks and slid down on the chair, curving his back like a tortoise shell. “My uncle and this dude Chauncy,
they was talkin’ how my uncle owed him money. Chauncy, he pulled out a big ol’ forty-five.”

She imagined a pistol’s reverberant roar in the living
room of a small house and the smell of cordite that would never come out of the drapes and upholstery.

In some situations there was no right thing to say. Whatever collection of nouns and verbs Roxanne could put together would
just sound fatuous to Ryan. She remembered Taryn’s eyes.