The Lost Girls (20 page)

The next morning Maurie came with Justine to drive the girls to school, saying she wanted to see what the town looked like these days, so after they dropped the girls off, Justine drove around the square. It was overcast, and in the milky light the buildings looked even more timeworn than usual. The few passersby walked with their shoulders hunched into the wind, past mounds of graying snow that clogged the street corners. Maurie looked out the window through huge black sunglasses, her face expressionless.

Justine pulled the Tercel into a spot in front of Ray's. She felt an oddly proprietary desire to show her mother the diner and its inhabitants. She'd felt the same way about Dr. Fishbaum's office when Maurie visited her in San Diego. She'd invited her mother to come with her to work one day, and Maurie spent the morning chatting with the old and befuddled patients in the waiting room. They seemed younger with her there. Dr. Fishbaum and Phoebe liked her, too. Justine had been proud of her, and proud of the office—it was her office, her job, her coworkers. Her place.

Now, though, Maurie kept her sunglasses on as they slid into Justine's usual booth. Not until she'd established that she didn't know anyone did she take them off. Justine cataloged the now-familiar faces—Maisy and Mike and Roberta, Lorna and Steve from the general store—and felt a rush of affection for them even though she'd never exchanged a word with any of them. She was about to tell her mother how she came here every morning and how great the coffee was when Ray came out of the kitchen.

“Maurie. What a surprise.”

Maurie gave Ray her most brilliant smile. “Ray Spiver. I thought you got out of this place years ago.”

Justine looked from Ray to her mother. It had never occurred to her that they were the same age. Maurie seemed so much younger.

Ray shrugged. “I came back.”

“And whatever happened to—what was his name? Jimmy?”

“Vietnam.”

“Oh, what a shame,” Maurie said, with what seemed like sincere sympathy.

“What can I get for you?” Ray's manner was friendly, but Justine knew her well enough by now to sense the distance. It made her think about what her mother had said the night before, about this town and her reputation in it.

“Just coffee,” Maurie said, again with that wide smile. As soon as Ray left she leaned across the table and hissed to Justine, “God, I hated that bitch.”

“What?” Justine shot a glance at Ray, who thankfully had her back to them. “Why?”

“She always looked down that fat nose of hers at me, even though she was nothing but trailer trash from Mahnomet. When she got that scholarship, you'd have thought she'd been crowned queen of England. Now look at her. Right back where she started.” Maurie's face contorted with malicious satisfaction, but when Ray brought her coffee she smiled at her as if she hadn't just called her an ugly bitch, and asked after a few old classmates. Ray, unsurprisingly, knew the latest on all of them. When Ray asked what she'd been up to all these years, Maurie waved a hand. “Seeing the world,” she said, and Ray nodded, as though she knew exactly what that meant.

Justine drank her coffee quickly, anxious to get out of the diner. She'd brought Maurie here to show her a place she considered hers, but as soon as Ray recognized her it had become Maurie's instead. This whole town, Justine reminded herself, belonged to Maurie
far more than it would ever belong to her. So did Lucy's house, no matter what Lucy's will said. That was yet another reason to leave.

When they got back to the lake, Maurie launched into the living room with a fury, and it was soon apparent her mission was broader than just a missing ring. By the time Justine cleaned the breakfast dishes, the Hummel figurines from the curio cabinet lay stacked in one paper bag, and the knickknacks that had littered the living room tables were piled in another. A third bag was crammed with papers from the rolltop desk. This was fine, Justine told herself. She needed to sort through the house anyway, and she could use the help. Still, watching Maurie cram unused stationery and broken reading glasses into the trash bag made her queasy. It was a little like watching a grave robber.

So she went upstairs. She started in Lucy's room, where she spent the morning packing her great-aunt's clothes for donation. Lucy seemed never to have gotten rid of anything, including her own mother's prim dresses, which still smelled of flowery perfume. Justine assumed there'd be nothing here worth keeping, but way in the back of the bedside table drawer, behind a Kleenex box and two bottles of Sominex, she found something odd. Carefully wrapped in a small silk handkerchief was a crude wooden pendant the size of a quail egg on a leather string. In its heart was carved the letter
L.
The wood was stained and worn smooth, as though it had been held often in someone's hand. A dear possession, obviously. Was it Lucy's? Or Lilith's? Maybe Maurie would know, though Justine doubted it. She set the pendant on the bedside table beside the photos of herself and her mother and of Lucy and Lilith.

Downstairs she heard metal hangers being tossed in a pile—Maurie must be plowing through the hall closet—so she went to the lavender bedroom. A quick survey of the dresser confirmed that Maurie, the consummate vagabond, had already moved in. The rest of the room was empty, except for a large, dust-covered
trunk in the closet. Justine pushed open the heavy lid. The acrid smell of mothballs made her eyes water.

The trunk was filled with a child's clothing: dresses and skirts and blouses with round collars and pearl buttons, all in soft pastels; a little girl's underwear and socks, a pair of white sandals, and black patent leather party shoes. Everything but the shoes was neatly folded in white paper.

They must be Emily's. All the things her mother had brought to the lake for her daughter that last summer, she had kept. Of course she had. She'd hoped Emily would come back and wear them again, and as the years passed she hadn't been able to give them away. So she'd kept them here, in the room Maurie had borrowed. Justine remembered how the old woman had tottered to the chair when her surviving daughters lit the candles beneath the painting. At nine, Justine had been too frightened of her to pity her. Now the thought of her folding these clothes with such care brought an ache to her throat.

Gently she placed the clothes in paper bags. They were too small for her daughters, but she couldn't leave them for the house's next owner to throw away or give to Goodwill, to be sold for fifty cents or a dollar. There must be a vintage clothing shop in Bemidji that would take them and sell them to someone who would value them.

At the bottom of the trunk, she found a Buster Brown shoe box. Inside was a child's blue slipper, trimmed in satin. Its sole was caked with long-dried dirt. Justine picked it up with her thumb and index finger. That Emily's mother had kept even this solitary, dirty slipper was somehow more heartbreaking than everything else put together.

“I see you found the Emily shrine.”

Maurie stood in the doorway. Startled, Justine nearly dropped the slipper. “It's awful, what happened to them.”

“I know. That damned Emily messed everything up for every
body. Though you'd never know it to listen to them. Growing up, it was like having a sister that everybody loves better than you, except she's dead, so you can't say anything bad about her and she'll never grow up and crash the car.” Maurie laughed. “You're lucky you're an only child. You didn't have to share me with anyone.” Before Justine could think how to respond to this, Maurie held up a pair of ancient white ice skates. “Look what I found!”

They were hers, she said, a present from Abe Miller. He'd seen how bored she was during the long winters, so he used his plow to clear a patch of ice on the lake. She skated there every fair day, and every time it snowed he plowed the lake again. She got pretty good; she could skate backward and do spins on one foot, even. Abe watched from his upstairs window while she did shows for him like in the Ice Capades. As she talked Maurie held the skates to her chest, and Justine could picture her as a young girl skating in circles, her arms out for balance and her breath in white clouds.

When Justine brought Angela and Melanie home from school, Maurie presented them with the skates as though they were Hans Christian Andersen's silver prize. “Who wants to learn to skate?”

Angela threw off her boots, but Melanie looked around with horror at the brown paper bags that were everywhere now, filled with Art Deco letter openers, midcentury ashtrays, and Victorian vases.

“We're going through Lucy's stuff,” Justine said. “We have to do it before we leave.”

Melanie walked to the closest brown bag. She picked up a candlestick, one of the two that had sat on the table beneath the portrait of Emily. She looked at Justine and tightened her lips. For once Justine knew what her daughter was thinking. “Before we go we'll see if there's anything we want to keep,” she told her.

The skates were way too big for Angela, and her face fell as Maurie yanked them off. “Let's try you,” she said to Melanie. Melanie eyed them dubiously, but after a bit of coaxing she eased one
foot into the old leather. They were too big for her, too, but Maurie tore up a page from one of Lucy's old tax returns and wadded it into the toes. Then she wedged Melanie's feet into the skates and drew up the laces. “Let's try them out!” She grabbed Melanie's hand, her smile splitting her face into a quarry of lines and fissures.

“But I can't skate,” Melanie protested.

“Of course you can't! I'm going to teach you!” Maurie pulled Melanie by the arms until she staggered to her feet, her ankles wobbling. “Justine, go get the shovel.”

It was three thirty, and the sun had already sunk behind the trees, but the sky was still bright as they headed down to the lake. They made an odd procession, Maurie holding Melanie's arm as she limped through snow that reached her knees, Justine carrying the shovel, and Angela huffing along beside her. When they got to the lake Maurie took the shovel and attacked the snow. It was heavy and deep, and after ten minutes she had cleared only a few square feet.

“There's too much,” Justine said. She wanted to go back inside. This was the longest she'd spent outdoors since they'd gotten here, and already her fingers were numb inside her gloves. The temperature must be close to zero.

“Oh, no. We're not giving up. Wait here.” Maurie clambered back to the road and half-ran to the lodge, where she clomped up the snow-covered steps and banged on the door.

“What's she doing?” Angela asked, her teeth chattering.

“I don't know,” Justine said, although she was pretty sure she did. She watched as Matthew opened the door to the lodge and let Maurie in.

“I don't want to skate,” Melanie said, looking at the lake and its blanket of snow broken only by the tire tracks of Matthew's truck. Justine couldn't blame her. But she knew they were powerless against Maurie when she was like this. Some of her worst childhood memories were of those times when Maurie, caught up in a
dervish-like frenzy, led her on some bizarre adventure from which she could not escape. Though, to be fair, they were just as often her best memories. When she was fifteen, she'd met Carole King at a party her mother made them crash, and Justine still remembered how beautiful the singer was, with her blond curls in a headband, a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.

“Just try it,” she said. “Your grandmother wants to teach you.”

Angela looked at the skates. “I wish they fit me.” Melanie glared at her, but didn't say anything more.

An engine started up, and Matthew's truck, plow attached, lumbered across the road and onto the ice. Maurie waved from the passenger window as the truck cleared a space the size of a basketball half-court. When it returned to shore she climbed out and skidded over to them. Matthew got out, too, and walked more slowly to stand behind Angela and Justine.

“Okay, Melanie, come with me.” Maurie took Melanie's hands and began to walk backward through the snow, Melanie staggering in her wake. When they reached the ice Maurie stepped onto it and pulled Melanie after her. The heavy steel blades scratched as they grabbed at the ice and held. Justine took Angela's hand. In San Diego, Melanie hadn't wanted to join the rec soccer team or the local Girl Scouts, nor had she played softball or basketball, taken ballet classes, or sung in the afterschool choir. She'd rejected all these things without even trying them. Maybe, Justine thought, Maurie could get her to skate, and she'd like it. Even warm places had ice rinks.

“When I move my right foot back, you move your left foot forward,” Maurie instructed. Melanie shook with the effort it took to balance. Her ankles turned in and her hands clutched Maurie's, but when Maurie moved her right foot backward Melanie inched her left skate forward. They took several steps like that in a frozen parody of a waltz, and Justine felt a singing flood of relief and
pride. Then one skate slipped and Melanie fell, taking Maurie with her, both of them hitting the ice hard.

“Shit!” Maurie pushed herself to her feet, creaky but resolute. She wrapped her arms around Melanie and pulled her up. Come on, Melanie, Justine thought. She willed Melanie to pull the skates under her, and after scouring at the ice for several desperate seconds, Melanie did. She teetered on the blades, her mittens digging into Maurie's forearms.

“I don't want to,” she said.

“The trick is not to be afraid.” Maurie shook off Melanie's hands and Melanie's feet wobbled for a second before she fell again, landing on her knees. She cried out, her face contorting as she bent forward. Justine cried out, too, her own knees faltering in sympathy. Then Melanie looked up at Maurie, and Justine could see from the set of her daughter's face that it was over; her mind was made up; she was never going to skate. Justine felt a tremor in her chest, and she gripped Angela's hand tighter.