Web of Angels (22 page)

“Thanks for coming over. Sorry I was a moron,” Cathy said.

“Not at all. I’ve had three kids. You should have seen me with my first. It isn’t true that you know how to breastfeed automatically or that the baby does. I thought my nipple would fall off before I figured it out.”

“But you’re …”

“I know. Flat.” Sharon glanced at Cathy. She wasn’t exactly enormous either, but she was just fourteen. Still. “Size has nothing to do with how much milk you have. I had lots. I could have fed twins. It was just learning to get it out.”

“I don’t think I would breastfeed. Bottles are more convenient.”

“Not necessarily. Your breasts are always there.”

Cathy tickled the baby under her chin. The baby giggled. “Mrs. Lewis, does sex hurt?”

She asked in honest ignorance though her insiders would know the answer to that and their answer would be,
Yes
.
Always
. Sharon needed to choose her words carefully and, as the mother of a son, her hands were suddenly moist. “Is this something you’re thinking about?”

“Just wondering.”

“Even if someone’s had a lot of sex, it can hurt if you feel pressured or nervous,” Sharon said. “But when you’re grown up and feel comfortable and happy with your partner, it’s really nice.” They sat close, mother and maiden, who was no maiden technically speaking, but a girl whose loneliness passed through her body into Sharon’s, where it slipped into a spot that was just its shape. And there was no more wavering, no more thinking she was crazy or imagining things. Sharon leaned toward Cathy, for she was a finder and she’d found these children. In the cleft of her broken heart was a resting place for them. She said as she would to her own daughters, “Like when you’re, oh I don’t know, twenty-five?”

“Sure, Mrs. Lewis,” Cathy said so virtuously that Sharon burst out laughing. And when the girl asked what she was laughing about, Sharon hugged Cathy with reckless abandon, feeling the girl’s stiffness melt, cuddling into her shoulder like Emmie or Nina. It lasted no more than half a minute. Then Cathy grabbed hold of herself and her maturity, and sat up straight. The baby was blinking and yawning.

“I think Linny is ready to go down,” Sharon said. “Where’s her crib?”

“Upstairs.” Cathy stood up, getting her backpack from the couch and slinging it over a shoulder out of habit. Even when her parents were out, she wouldn’t leave her stuff lying just anywhere. “Coming?”

The staircase was steep and narrow, the handrail of oak, the baluster wrought iron with graceful curves between the posts. On the wall was a gallery of small paintings that matched the rise of the stairs, each of different water creatures: dolphins, seahorses, tropical fish in bright colours. Surely they didn’t lead to anything monstrous, Sharon thought, forgetting that humans routinely surpassed the monsters of their imaginations. On the forbidden second floor, she stopped behind Cathy, looking down the hallway. At the far end was a small window of frosted glass. There was only one door, halfway down, which opened into an office.

“Mrs. Lewis?” Cathy called.

Following her, Sharon stepped into the office, which led at either end into bedrooms that had no other way in or out but through the office. The crib was in Heather’s room, which was sparsely furnished with the necessaries, cramped by crib and change table. The curtains were made of eyelet cotton, as were the bumper pads and the quilt, the bed covered with a chenille spread, all of it white. The only colour was on the crib itself, the headboard painted with the cow jumping over the moon and the footboard with the cat playing the fiddle for the dish and the spoon. “My sister did that,” Cathy said. “Wasn’t she good?”

“Yes, very. The detail.” Not just a cat, a dish and a spoon, but a willow pattern plate, a carved wooden spoon, a calico cat with strokable fur. “That must have taken her a long time.”

“It was the only thing my parents let her paint. I expected her to mess it up on purpose. But she didn’t. She worked so
hard. I don’t understand, Mrs. Lewis.” Cathy pulled the latch, lowering the side of the crib. “How could she make this so beautiful and then kill herself?” Her eyes were pained, angry. “And Linny—Heather didn’t know Mom could get her out.”

“I don’t have an answer, honey. I wonder about that, myself.” Sharon laid the baby down on her back. The window faced the alley and the garages that lined it, the tiring sun staining clouds red. “The room is so bare. Did your parents give away everything?”

“Uh huh, but there wasn’t much.” Cathy held on to her backpack protectively. “They stripped her room the last time she ran away. The nanny sleeps there.” She pointed to Heather’s bed. There were no posters or photographs, no bookshelves. Daisy wallpaper that would have irked a kid who gelled her hair straight up. In the alley a motorcycle was revving. “I used to keep Heather’s portfolio on my key chain. But Mom took that too and probably threw it out.”

“On your key chain?”

“It was a flash drive.”

“Not a grey one.”

“Yes, it was small. Just a gigabyte.”

“I wonder.” And on the inside Sharon could see through another’s eyes: Debra searching her bag, fishing for her chequebook. A clinking sound, so slight as to seem imaginary, except to someone who noticed every tiny change. “I found something in the dining room. It couldn’t be this, could it?”

“OMG, is it?” Cathy snatched the stick out of Sharon’s hand, turning it over greedily. An ordinary flash drive, a cheap
brand, it could be any of the kids.’ “Let’s check. I just need to get the password.”

They went through the door to the office. One wall was lined with cabinets, tables against the other walls, four computers, cables running between them, a flat tablet hooked into the laptop. It was a working room with many doors and door jambs stuck under to keep them open so that everything could be seen from here: the hall, the bedrooms, even a tiny bathroom with a shower stall and lockable medicine cabinet. Cathy’s room was peach and white, with sheer curtains over the blinds, a swag valence, and ruffled bedspread.

“Emmie would love your room,” Sharon said.

“She can have it.” Cathy frowned. “The password isn’t here. I should have changed it to something I could remember, but numbers and letters are safer.” She searched all the pockets of her backpack, then ransacked drawers. There was a lace doily on top of the dresser, a crystal atomizer with gold tassels on the doily, also a lacquer enamel makeup tray. The makeup was pristine, since everything Cathy actually used was in her backpack. There were framed awards on the wall, for dancing, for figure skating, for academic excellence. A hutch of shelves on her desk held a collection of porcelain and wood music boxes. This room was larger than her sister’s, or seemed so without the baby furniture. It faced the front of the house and the second floor balcony, though nothing could be seen through the blinds. Cathy lifted the bedspread, her backpack slumping on the peach carpet as she looked under the bed. Kneeling, she paused as if thinking. Or listening. “I forgot. It’s in the music box.”

“This one?” Sharon tipped up the roof of an alpine chalet. Nothing. Then she lifted the lid of a wooden music box with a painted cat on the lid. Inside was a folded piece of paper with a string of letters and numbers.

Cathy took the paper from her and shut the music box. “That’s it. Let’s use my laptop.” Cathy led Sharon into the office.

Pushing her hair back, Cathy sat down at one of the tables. In a couple of minutes, her laptop was booted up, the flash drive plugged into a USB port. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, face close to the screen as if she could jump into it and be with her sister again.

There were portraits of kids. Dozens of them. Toddlers. Kids in a park. Street kids. Twins in a jogging stroller. Many of a boy with cloudy eyes and a little girl who’d lost her front teeth and resembled him. Like the crib paintings, they were drawn with painstaking detail, the texture of hair, the wrinkle of clothes, the hue of skin and the softness of it, the set of a mouth, the twist of posture. She must have erased and redrawn her lines again and again to get that realism. Why would a girl so preoccupied with the crackling vividness of children want to prevent the birth of her own? There were several portraits of Cathy: stormy eyes; the lips about to swear; the girl next door smile; others. Heather had known her sister in all her forms.

“She was talented,” Sharon said.

“That’s why I took art. I told my parents I was supposed to have a drawing tablet for class. It plugs into the computer or you can use it on its own, then you back it up on a stick and delete.”

Sharon nodded. Sketchbooks were awkward. A flash drive could be hidden in a sock drawer, a pocket, a tampon purse.

“My parents wouldn’t let her get anything. So I told them I needed it for school.”

“What’s that?” Sharon asked, stopping Cathy as she was about to click next. The image on the screen wasn’t like any of the others, depicting Wonder Woman in wild colours throwing her lasso, hair streaming purple and green like the stained glass in the front door, breasts about to pop out of her bodice.

“That’s mine. But art is over. I should delete it.”

“Leave it.” Gently pushing Cathy’s hand aside before she pulled out the flash drive, Sharon wondered why she’d never noticed the callus on the girl’s middle finger. It came from pressing hard, the faint charcoal marks on her fingertips from smudging paper. Sharon had made assumptions: the other sister was the artist; the other sister was the bad girl. “I like it.”

“Why?” A sardonic smile: Cathy had switched. This was the kid who arm-wrestled, the one who snapped bubble gum in her father’s face. Eyes of a newborn, more grey than blue—a newborn left in a dumpster. As the girl doodled on the tablet with a stylus, lines appeared on the screen, hinting at the picture that might emerge. She was the artist, not Cathy, Sharon thought.

“I like what you did because it’s interesting. Different.”

Pause. Staring at Sharon. “Tomorrow’s Mother’s Day.”

“Yes it is,” Sharon said.

“I got a card for the mother,” she said, dragging out “i” and “the,” taunting. The fake “i,” the missing “my.” Offering
the truth, fairly sure it wouldn’t be heard by the dumb old mom standing before her. Flat-chested, skinny, long hair rust red. Hardly a wonder woman. “Of course, Heather isn’t here to get one.”

“Do you miss her?”

“She was an idiot.”

“You can still miss an idiot. I miss my sister.”

“Did she off herself too?”

“No. She wouldn’t leave the family. And I did. But then I was the black sheep like Heather.”

The girl snorted. “That’s what you think. Heather always came back. Except this time. That’s what pisses them off more than anything.”

Sharon looked at the computer screen again. Wonder Woman could make anyone tell the truth with that golden lasso, but she’d been displaced by snaky lines that hadn’t yet made their shape plain. “I wish Heather could have talked to someone.”

“What for? So they could give her a bunch of pills to zone her out again?”

“I took pills,” Sharon said. “I got off them and it wasn’t fun. Your sister must have gone through hell. But I found a therapist to talk to who didn’t tell anybody what I said. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what I might have done. That’s why I would never tell anyone what someone told me.” It was Sharon’s turn to rudely stare, willing her thoughts into this child’s brain: she could be told; she would believe. “I know you stole the gun. Why?”

The girl sat motionless, then lowered her eyes as if talking
inside, making a decision about something. “I showed the gun to Heather. I said, if she needed it. So she’d know where it was. Not to hurt herself. For protection, that’s all. Now she’s gone and,” the girl glared, daring Sharon to be shocked, outraged, “I hate her!”

“I understand that,” Sharon said. “My sister and I needed protection, too. What do you need protection from?”

Her eyes were on the girl’s, offering a promise. She was the mom, a garden wall surrounding all children who came into her house. But this was not her house and Cathy was blinking rapidly as if an eyelash had got into her eyes and she was rubbing them to hide her confusion. She picked up everything from the floor, shoving it into her backpack. She yawned. There were shadows under her eyes. “Thanks for coming, Mrs. Lewis. I’ve got to finish my homework and clean up before my parents get home.”

She stood to walk her boyfriend’s mother out, politely dismissing her. But in the hallway, when Sharon retrieved her bag from the table, she opened it to take out a pen and a scrap of paper, writing on the back of a Best Foods receipt. “Here’s my cell number. Put it in your backpack, okay? Just call if you need me.”

At home after the kids were in bed, Sharon baked and cooked until two a.m., thinking that the truth stank. She made roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. She made cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies, and wheat-free banana muffins. While the food was in the oven, she mopped the floor, she cleaned out the fridge, she didn’t think about Mother’s Day. The trick was to keep moving. You can run
across hot coals if you move quickly enough. It has to do with the properties of thermal conductivity and the fact that human feet are mostly water. Human thought, however, is not. So at last, exhausted, she stood still and let someone else take over.

Ally was in the kitchen with Echo. Since that first time, they’d often come to the kitchen to sit on the Housekeeper’s lap, if she wasn’t busy, or to play quietly in a corner if she was taking care of Sharon, as she was now. Sharon sat with her eyes closed while the Housekeeper talked, trying to get through to her. Ally thought if she gave Sharon a good pinch, she’d open her eyes, but the Housekeeper wouldn’t let her. Sharon had to open her eyes her own self. Ally thought a pinch would be better.

“I like music boxes,” Ally said to Echo. Through the window, she could see Lyssa and Alec hanging out by the creek. Maybe she’d go to the creek sometime. “Cathy has lots.”

“She closed the cat one fast. She made a funny face,” Echo said. He was drawing on the kitchen floor with chalk, faces and circles within circles. “I seed what was in the box.”