The Lost Girls (12 page)

“Not yet, but I'm looking,” Justine lied. At least she could cross calling her mother off her list. “There's a lot of stuff here.”

“Believe me, sweetie, I know. Those two never threw anything away.” Maurie paused. Then, as though the notion had just occurred to her, she said, “I'll tell you what. I'm kind of at loose ends right now. How about I come up there and help you look?”

Justine sank into a chair and closed her eyes. She should have seen this coming. Of course her mother would come up here. The diamond ring was one thing, but the house was quite another, and then there was Lucy's investment portfolio. Justine wondered if Maurie knew about that. She'd been thinking about giving her some of it—it felt wrong that Lucy had cut her out—but the transparency of her mother's plotting made her think
again. When she opened her eyes the red and white saltshaker on the lazy Susan looked back at her, its rosy baker's smile cheerful and dead. She wished she were brave enough to tell her mother not to come. She wondered if the woman in the bathroom mirror would have been.

“You don't have to do that,” she said, though she knew it was hopeless.

“Don't be silly. We can have Christmas together. It'll be like old times.”

The last time Justine had seen Maurie, her mother had called from a gas station outside Roseville and showed up in San Diego eight hours later. For six months she slept on the couch, scattered her stuff all over, flirted with Francis, and followed Justine around, offering unwanted advice on everything from her clothes to her parenting. When she left she took $1,200 with her, almost all the money Justine had managed to save since she'd started working at Dr. Fishbaum's. A loan, supposedly.

But it was also true that Melanie and Angela had adored her. To them, their grandmother was a beautiful gypsy in glamorous clothes and Navajo jewelry who painted their nails, did their hair, and gave them necklaces she picked up from sidewalk vendors. Justine would come home to find all three of them on the couch, her mother's legs crossed like a child's and the girls sitting beside her draped in Mardi Gras beads. When Maurie left the girls had cried for days, even Melanie.

A burst of flat, canned laughter came from the television. Justine pictured her daughters, bundled in their coats on Lucy's worn sofa, watching it with deadened eyes.

Maurie said, “You know, I'd kind of like to see the old place one more time.” She spoke as if it were a silly notion, but something wistful colored her voice, and her breezy tone didn't quite mask it.

Justine picked up the saltshaker. Her finger traced its empty smile. “What about Phil?”

“Oh, Phil. He was the worst of the lot, honey, the absolute worst. I'll tell you all about it when I get there. Tell my girls that Grandma's bringing kisses for Christmas.”

Independence Day was the one day the lake families returned to town, to watch the parade down Main Street and listen to the bands play in the square. So by nine that morning, I was dressed in a blue-and-red-striped skirt and a white blouse, my hair pulled into a tail that exploded in frizzy curls behind a red ribbon. Lilith and Emily wore their patriotic best, too, and Mother warned Lilith and me not to get dirty as she packed our picnic basket and aired our blankets. Emily, of course, was at no such risk; Mother took her everywhere with her as though they were joined by an invisible apron string.

Father sat on the front porch, reading as he waited to drive us into town. His straw hat with the red band sat on his lap. At one point, Mother sent me to him with a glass of iced tea. As I set it beside him, he raised his eyes from his book. “You look a picture, Lucy.”

Until that moment I'd felt starched and ridiculous, but now I was glad of the pull of hair at my temples and the fussy skirt whose petticoats scratched my thighs. On impulse I gave a little curtsey, and he chuckled. I blushed and, unable to think of a way to prolong the encounter further, sidled away.

In our room, Lilith was in a wretched mood. Mother had bought her an outfit almost as childish as mine, a dress with a big navy skirt beneath a white bow and the same black patent leather Mary Janes Emily and I wore. She stood at our window watching Jeannette and Betty walk past in their narrow, bias-cut dresses and low-heeled shoes, envy and frustration written on her face.

“You look pretty,” I said, to console her, because of course she did. She told me to leave her alone and went downstairs. From our window I watched her walk down our front steps and up the path after the older girls, her skirt swinging like a bell below the bow.

Without her, our room felt small and hot, so before long I went out, too. By the time I got to the lane Lilith had reached the lodge, and I watched as she disappeared inside. Next door, Mr. Williams was loading a picnic basket into his car. His face shone with sweat above the white collar of his shirt, but he smiled in his good-natured way and wished me a happy Fourth of July. I said the same, but I didn't want to talk to him, so I went down to the lake.

The water was morning-still, and the sky was mounded with white clouds that were reflected on its surface as on a mirror. I wished I could take off my shoes and socks and feel the sand on my feet. It would still be cool from the night, and its coarse grains would be pleasantly sharp between my toes. But that would spoil my socks, so I skipped stones instead. I was good at skipping stones, and I was secretly proud of this. As I counted each stone's footsteps across the unruffled surface I began to feel better.

I'd just bounced a stone seven times when I heard a low whistle, and turned to see Matthew Miller standing at the edge of the grass. He wore a faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and brown pants that were too loose: hand-me-downs from his brother, no doubt, and handmade, like most of the things they wore. He was carrying a metal toolbox. He wasn't going to the parade, I realized. Now that I thought about it, I supposed the Millers never went.

“You're good at that,” he said, “for a girl.” He smiled as he said it, though, so I didn't know if I was allowed to take offense. “What's your record?”

“Twelve.”

“Mine's fourteen.” He dropped the toolbox and walked onto the sand, scanning for a likely stone. I was skeptical, but he launched the stone he found in a looping, sidearm motion that surprised me
with its grace. It flew low over the water like a bird scanning for fish, then dipped to the surface. We watched and counted. Ten. Matthew looked at me from under his bangs, a satisfied smile on his lips. I hated to admit it, but I was impressed, and he could tell. His smile became a crooked-toothed grin that made me laugh despite myself. I told him I could do better. He said, let's see.

As I looked for a stone, a voice called his name. Mrs. Miller was standing at the door of the lodge with a dish towel in her hand. “Get over here,” she said sharply, her deep voice carrying easily across the hundred yards between us. “Bring that toolbox with you.”

“Looks like you're off the hook,” Matthew said, and ran off with the toolbox banging against his leg. I watched him go. When the lodge door closed behind him, I thought of Lilith, Jeannette, and Betty sipping Cokes at one of the wooden tables, Lilith's dark head glossy in the light from the overhead lamps. I didn't feel like skipping stones anymore. I gave the sand a shove with my toe and headed back to our house.

Mr. Williams was gone, but Mother was in our side yard talking with Mrs. Williams, who had walked over for a chat. Emily, in a white eyelet dress, sat on a tree stump nearby. As I crossed the yard, she stood up, cast a sly eye at Mother, who was deep in conversation, and sidled off behind the Williamses' house.

Well, that was interesting. I hadn't thought of Emily as devious; in fact, she seemed to have no guile at all. But she was definitely up to something now. I cut across the Williamses' front yard in time to see her slip behind the Joneses' and head for the lodge. On that side, the lodge rose above the sandy ground on thick posts about three feet high, and Emily, with a quick look over her shoulder, disappeared beneath it.

I was delighted. I'd been so careful not to get my feet dirty, and here was Emily messing about under the lodge in her best white dress, something that surely would earn her an all-too-rare repri
mand. I went up to the lodge and peered into the den underneath. Emily squatted ten feet away with her skirt hitched up so her panties were showing. She clutched something to her chest, something small and squirmy, and in the frozen moment after she saw me I realized something was rustling on the ground before her.

“Don't hurt them,” she whispered.

I walked toward her on my haunches, holding up my own skirt. “Don't hurt them,” she said again, and now I felt a little bit angry: who did she think I was that I would hurt them, whatever they were? Then I saw what she'd found. A mother cat lay curled in a hollow in the sand, and writhing on her belly were kittens, each no bigger than the palm of my hand. They were so new that their eyes were still sealed shut. In the quiet I could hear the smacking sounds they made as they suckled.

I sank to my knees, my skirt forgotten. The mother looked at me with her eyes glinting and her ears bent back, but she didn't hiss or growl, which told me Emily had been there often enough to earn her wary trust. One kitten, yellow with a white spot on its forehead, slipped from the pile and burrowed frantically into the backs of its brothers and sisters. I scooped it into my hand. Its claws were tiny needles as it stretched out its paws, searching for the teat. Its pink mouth nuzzled the tip of my finger, the tongue barely a touch on my skin, and its head shook with the effort it took to hold it upright. I could feel its heart, a helpless patter in my palm.

“How did you find them?” I asked.

“Abe showed me.”

“Abe Miller?”

“He's my friend.” She was proud, even a little defiant. I remembered how Abe had walked over to her the day Lilith and I swam to the pontoon. I hadn't thought anything of it then, but now the notion of Emily and Abe being friends struck me as strange. Not on Abe's part: he was childlike, as I've said, and he liked to
play with the littlest children among the lake families. I'd often seen him holding their hands, or carrying them on his shoulders. But never Emily, because Emily wasn't allowed to leave our yard without permission, and I was certain Mother would never have permitted her to play with Abe in any event. Her only playmate, infrequent at that, was Amanda Davies, a vivacious girl whose mother sometimes brought her when she visited but who found Emily too dull to seek out otherwise.

Mother's shrill voice calling Emily's name interrupted my thoughts. Emily took off running. I returned my kitten to the nest, where it latched hungrily onto a teat, and walked after her, looking back over my shoulder at the dark space beneath the lodge.

Mother was behind the Joneses', her hands twisted together. Mrs. Williams stood twenty paces off, watching her. When Mother saw Emily she said, “Oh, there you are,” as if it was nothing, but it hadn't been nothing, and I felt a surge of angry hurt. Lilith and I could spend hours in the distant corners of the forest and Mother wouldn't care, but Emily couldn't leave her side for ten minutes without her panicking. I couldn't imagine how Emily had managed to spend enough time with Abe to become friends. Then I thought: maybe today wasn't the first time she'd been devious. I looked at her. She stood before Mother in her white dress with her round dark eyes, the picture of contrite innocence. Grudgingly, I was impressed.

Then Mother noticed me, and our disarray—not only was my skirt smudged, but cobwebs littered my hair, and the hem of Emily's dress, despite her efforts, was brown with dirt. “What have you two been up to?” she asked, her anger at our filth limned with astonishment that we'd been up to anything, together, at all. Emily looked at me, pleading.

I almost told. If Lilith had been there, she would have, and she would have enjoyed watching Mother forbid Emily to go under the lodge ever again. But Lilith wasn't there, and I remembered
the warmth of the kitten in my hand, the furtive way Emily had sneaked away from Mother, and the timbre of her voice when she said Abe was her friend. I said, “We were just playing.” The gratitude that flooded Emily's face was so naked I had to look away, but it made me glad I hadn't said anything.

I haven't been to the Independence Day parade since the late 1960s, when it turned into an unpleasant annual clash over the Vietnam War and we stopped going. When I think of the parades of my youth I hear the brass band playing on hay bales in a horse-pulled wagon, and I see the bunting around the square, the flags on the lampposts, the farmers in clean overalls and the girls with ribbons in their hair. It was just a small town parade, typical for its time, but to me it was no less memorable for being commonplace. Every year Lilith, Mother, Emily, and I stood with the Williamses on the sidewalk outside our pharmacy, waving little flags as Father rode by in Mr. Williams's Ford with the
WILLIAMS & WILLIAMS
law firm banner on the grille and the
EVANS PHARMACY
banner on the back. Father looked so handsome, with his black hair slicked back, his seersucker suit neat on his slender frame, and his straw hat.

At night there would be fireworks over at the baseball field, but the lake families never stayed for them. We went back to the lake, where the Millers would serve us supper as they had on the first night of summer, and then we had our own fireworks show, put on by the oldest Jones brothers, Eddie and Brian. They were in their early twenties then, riotous men-children, survivors of countless scrapes—many involving fire—and they relished the opportunity to blow things up in a community-sanctioned cause. I'm sure the town's fireworks couldn't compare to the show they put on for our eyes only, the blossoms of color falling topsy-turvy in the sky, mirrored in the still night water.

When the fireworks were done, we lit a bonfire on the beach and
gathered around it in chairs, on the picnic tables, or on the cool sand. The roar of the fire and the swirling ascension of sparks held us quiet for a time, the firelight throwing strange shadows on the faces of mothers and fathers, grandparents and infants. I sat on the sand beside Lilith, and Mother and Father sat in chairs behind us. Mother's face was rosy and young-looking in the firelight. Her hair was like mine, frazzled and untamable, but that night it looked like a halo around her pale oval face. Father had his arm around her, his fingers playing with a thread on her shawl. Emily drowsed on his lap, her legs draped over his thighs. My face roasted in the heat of the fire, while my back felt the chill rising off the lake. But I was warm inside, and calm. In the lodge the lights were on; the Millers were cleaning up after our feast. I thought about Matthew scrubbing dishes while the fireworks burst. I hoped he'd been allowed to watch them.

At some point I turned to Lilith, but she was gone. I looked around and saw her on the other side of the bonfire with Jeannette and Betty, the full skirt of her dress tucked close around her legs. They were giggling, their eyes sliding to Charlie and his friends, who sat nearby. The boys were shoving and showing off, as boys do. Then Charlie, urged on by his friends, came to stand behind Lilith. She smiled up at him, and her hand moved to rest on his forearm.

I looked at Father. He was watching them. Even in the dim light I could see the rigid set of his face. Mother saw it, too, and our eyes met. I slipped back from the fire and walked around the group until I was behind Lilith. I leaned close and, masking my words with a smile as though I was sharing a joke, I told her that Father was watching.

For a moment she froze. Then she looked at Father across the fire and laughed, an openmouthed, flirtatious laugh, her teeth shining white. Father's face remained still, his eyes bent upon her, but his hand jumped where it sat on Mother's shoulder. Then Lilith
turned to Charlie, slid her hand down his forearm, and took his hand in hers.

I stopped breathing. I couldn't bring myself to look across the fire to where Father surely was watching still. When Jeannette leaned across me to say something to Lilith I slid away, outside the circle, down the dark beach, past our row of houses. I walked to the end of the dock and sat on the cool metal. The moon was half full, and its light spilled on the water. The Milky Way was a gossamer veil across the sky. My thoughts were incoherent and filled with dread.

The night wore on. One by one and two by two people stood, stretched, and left the bonfire. I saw Mother and Father rise, Mother carrying Emily. They didn't tell Lilith to come, as I thought they might, though Father paused and looked back at the fire before going inside. Only a dozen people were left now, mostly teenagers and younger boys allowed to stay up late on the holiday. I heard Lilith's clear laughter ring out, and once or twice Charlie's deepening voice. The littler boys hunted crawdads at the water's edge and then threw them into the fire to sizzle and explode. Up and down the row the other houses went dark. But in our house the parlor light remained lit.