After Image, page 16
“I’ve been looking for something of Allie’s that she used to carry around,” I say carefully. “A little flash drive that looked like a panda bear.”
“Oh?” His face is blank. If the flash drive rings any bells with him, he’s doing a great job of hiding it.
“A friend of mine said she might have had some of her writing on it,” I say, pushing further. “An essay. Something she was working on for your class.”
There. His expression doesn’t change, but a muscle in his jaw flexes.
“It would be really amazing if I could find it.” I chatter on as if I haven’t noticed his reaction. “Something from Allie’s college years, something to remember her by. I’m putting together a memorial for the four-year anniversary of her disappearance. And it would be great to share something of hers like that. Something personal.”
Macnamara shifts in his chair. “I don’t know what you think I can do.”
“Well, I wondered if you might have a copy of the essay somewhere. Since it was for your class.”
He looks up at the ceiling, as if he’s thinking deeply. Then he shakes his head. “No, sorry. I tossed all my stuff from LACSA years ago.”
“But you remember her essay, don’t you?”
He smiles wryly. “I read a lot of student essays, Natasha. If I remembered them all, I’d have no room left in my brain.”
I remember what Ruiz said about Macnamara dodging questions. He hasn’t actually answered the one I asked.
“Oh. Well. That’s weird,” I say. Ruiz told me not to push him, but I can’t help it. I want to wipe that smug expression off his face. He thinks he can lie to me and get away with it.
“Why?”
“Because,” I say, “Allie told me you wanted to help her publish the essay. She talked about it, like, all the time. And if you thought it was that good—well, it seems strange that you wouldn’t remember it.”
He goes completely still. He hadn’t expected me to know about the publication. Then his face clears, as if he’s just recalled something. “I mean, now that you mention it, yes, I do remember we had a discussion once about getting her writing published. But we never talked about anything specific.”
Liar.
Sweat is forming at his temples, tiny beads that glint in the sunlight.
I scoot forward on the couch, my voice low and fierce. “I know you read that essay.”
He draws in a deep breath, calculating the risk of continuing his denial. The knuckles of his clasped hands are white. “Okay, yes, I remember it,” he concedes. “Quite a piece of writing. Did you read it?” he asks.
I shake my head. “But I know you did. So why lie about it?”
He assesses me with a look I remember from his classroom: as if he could see the inner workings of my brain. “Yes, Allie wrote an essay.” His voice is flat, impersonal. “And it was very good. Good enough that I thought she could get it published. But the essay, it could’ve caused problems for her.”
“Problems? How?”
He stands up and walks over to the window, gazing out at the potted succulents on the patio. After a moment, he says, “She’d written about Isabel. About what it was like growing up with her.” He turns. “Allie didn’t pull any punches. The way she portrayed Isabel was . . . less than flattering. I didn’t have an issue with that, but then Allie . . .” He grimaces. “I don’t know why, but she told her mother about what she was writing. I think she threw it in her face, during an argument. That turned out to be a mistake.”
I can only imagine. Allie’s relationship with Isabel hadn’t improved after Allie moved in with us in Palos Verdes. If anything, it got worse. Later, during college, whenever I was in a room with the two of them, I got the feeling that, at any minute, an epic argument might erupt.
“Anyway,” Macnamara says. “Isabel went on the warpath. Threatened to sue Allie if she published.”
“Seriously? What did Allie write?” It must’ve been bad for Isabel to get so worked up.
Macnamara rubs his forehead. “Just . . . details about Isabel’s life she wouldn’t have been happy to have go public. Her drinking. Her partying. The amount of time Allie was left alone as a child. Let’s just say, it wouldn’t have been good for her image.”
Isabel’s image. Her philanthropy. The trips to Africa. The media has always portrayed her as something close to a saint.
“After that,” Macnamara says, “I got nervous. At that point, Allie was only a couple of weeks sober. Wading into a public battle with Isabel, facing a potential lawsuit . . .” He spreads his hands wide. “It could’ve destroyed all the progress she’d made. So, I encouraged her to hold off. Just for a while. It wasn’t the right time.”
“What did Allie say to that?”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “It did not go over well. She called me a coward. We argued. Finally, I gave in. I told her, ‘Go ahead. Do what you want. It’s your funeral.’” When he realizes his choice of words, he winces. “Or something to that effect.”
“But if Allie was determined to publish,” I ask, “how come she never did?”
He turns to me. His skin is pale, as if he rarely leaves the house these days. “Isabel.”
“Isabel?”
“Somehow she found out, about Allie and me.”
A sick feeling washes over me.
“Allie swore she never told her mother about us,” he says. “But all of a sudden, I have Isabel Andersen calling my office phone at LACSA. Telling me that if I don’t put an end to this essay, she’ll go to my supervisors about my relationship with Allie. So, again, I tried to persuade Allie to leave the essay idea alone.”
“Did you tell her why?”
He shakes his head. “God, no. I knew the minute I mentioned Isabel, Allie would go off the rails. So I tried to reason with her. What would be the harm in waiting to publish? In six months, a year, she’d be in a better position.”
And in a year, Allie would have graduated. She’d no longer be Macnamara’s student. Had Macnamara been concerned about Allie’s position or his own?
He sighs. “But it didn’t work. To Allie, the issue was black and white. Either I was with her or I was against her.”
“So she broke up with you.” I’m sweating, but I can’t take off my jacket, not with the phone in my pocket like it is, pressing against my heart.
He nods. “It was only then, at the end, that I realized how unstable she really was.”
Unstable. The word hovers in the air. “What do you mean?”
He leans back against the sliding door. “When I talked to her that last time, she went completely ballistic. Screamed. Threw things. I’d never seen her get like that. I’d never seen anyone get like that.”
I swallow. If he was lying before, he’s definitely not now. Because I know exactly what he’s describing. One of Allie’s rages.
CHAPTER 33
December 2008
In the backyard of the house on Via Montemar, Mom and I sat at the patio table, sipping tea as we bent over our notebooks. She was grading exams, and I was trying to focus on my chemistry homework. But I kept glancing behind me, at the house.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked. Isabel had come over that afternoon so that she and Giles and Allie could talk. A family meeting.
Mom scribbled a note on a student’s paper, a small line appearing between her eyebrows. “Honey, it’s really none of our business.”
I frowned down at the pages of my notebook. I was thinking about Allie’s liquor stash in the AC vent. Suppose Giles had found it. Suppose Allie was going to get sent away to that boarding school. Was there something I could do to stop it? I could claim the liquor bottles were mine. But no one would buy that, not for a second.
Mom glanced up from her grading. “It’s nothing serious, Tasha. They just want to talk about how they’re going to handle the holidays this year. After last year, you know, when Allie stormed out . . . they just want to make sure things go more smoothly this time.”
“That requires a whole meeting?”
She tapped her pen on her stack of papers. “Well, Isabel wants Allie to go up to her house for Christmas this year.”
“Oh.” Allie flatly refused to spend one-on-one time with Isabel. She’d go to the Malibu house if she could drag me along with her. But going to Isabel’s solo . . .
“Yeah, Allie’s never going to go for that,” I said.
“Well, that’s not really fair,” Mom said mildly. “Allie spent the last two holidays with us. And Allie can’t stay angry at Isabel forever.”
“Mmm.” I had my doubts about that. After Allie got out of Seabrook, Isabel had made it clear that Allie couldn’t move back in with her. That was when Allie got shunted over to Giles, who for most of her life she’d only seen during the holidays. Allie didn’t appreciate being treated like a hot potato.
I stared out at the still surface of the pool. Mom went back to grading papers, and for a minute the only sound was the birds chirping in the trees. Then a scream ripped through the air, a sound out of a slasher movie.
I dropped my pen and leaped up before I’d fully registered that the noise was coming from the house. Mom scrambled to her feet, too, her papers scattering across the deck.
“What on earth?” she said.
“I won’t!” someone shrieked. It was Allie, her voice raised to a strange, distorted pitch. “I won’t! I won’t!”
My heart was thumping so hard that my rib cage hurt. I moved toward the sliding glass door, but my mother grabbed me by the arm. “Wait,” she said, her face pale. But when I heard Allie scream again, I jerked out of Mom’s grip, pulled open the door, and stepped into the kitchen.
“Keep your voice down!” Isabel was shouting, her voice carrying into the kitchen from the living room.
“I hate you!” Allie screamed. “I hate you.”
There was a smash, the sound of glass breaking.
Giles roared, “That’s enough. Alastriana!”
Another crash.
I stepped closer to the living room doorway, close enough to hear Giles say in a fierce tone, “I think you’d better remember the terms you agreed to when you moved into this house.”
“Fuck you,” Allie said, her voice raw and hoarse. “You think I don’t know you don’t want me here? You’d get rid of me in a second, if only you could think of where to put me.”
“Don’t be ridicul—”
“Oh, go ahead and kick me out,” Allie said. “I’m tired of waiting for it. I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck.” Then she screamed again—a high, awful sound—and ran upstairs.
I turned to see my mother standing behind me, her eyes wide.
In the living room, Isabel had started sobbing. “You see what she’s like,” she said to Giles. “You see what I’ve had to put up with.”
“Oh, spare me the martyr act,” Giles snapped. “You’re the one who let Matthew spoil her rotten while you were off on your film shoots—”
“Don’t you dare lecture me on parenting,” Isabel whispered in a terrible voice. “You, you—”
“Get out!” Allie screamed from upstairs. “Get out, get out, get out.” There was a thud as something hit the floor above us.
Her shouts must have been carrying through the walls and out into the street. I wondered if our neighbors had called the police. I would have, if I were them.
“Are you happy now?” Giles said to Isabel. “I told you this was a bad idea. But do you ever listen?”
After a moment, I heard the front door slam, followed by the click of Isabel’s high heels as she walked down our front path. In the kitchen, Mom and I looked at each other, unsure what to do next. When Giles walked into the kitchen, his face blotchy and red, Mom went up to him and rested a hand against his face.
“Jesus. What just happened in there?”
He jerked away. “Just . . . give me a minute.” He walked to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. When he brought the glass to his mouth, his hand was shaking. It was a good thirty seconds before he seemed able to trust himself to speak. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. Isabel told me that Allie had trouble controlling her temper. But I had no idea it was this bad.”
“She’s lived here a year, Giles,” Mom said. “And I’ve never seen her get like that.”
“Well, we’ve been very lenient with her, haven’t we? This is the first time I’ve really put my foot down. I was trying to support Isabel . . .” He set the glass down on the counter with a clank. “Unfortunately, Allie’s very used to getting her own way.”
Mom reached out and rubbed his shoulder. This time, he clutched at her hand, as if trying to absorb her calm. Then he pulled her close, his arms wrapping around her back. “It’s just theatrics,” he murmured in her ear. “Not a surprise, I guess, given who her mother is.” That made both of them laugh a little.
I slipped out of the kitchen. Before today, I’d never really understood what had drawn Giles and my mom to each other, but now I finally got it, what Giles saw in my plainspoken, ordinary mom. She was the anti-Isabel. She was solid ground.
Quietly, I padded up the stairs to Allie’s bedroom. But when I got to her door, I hesitated.
I reached out and touched the cool metal of the door handle. Then I heard a car door slam in the driveway. Stepping away from Allie’s bedroom, I moved near the window that overlooked the front yard. Isabel’s white Tesla was parked in the driveway, and she sat in the driver’s seat, resting her forehead on the steering wheel and crying. From that angle, she looked so much like Allie that she could’ve been her twin.
I watched her for a minute or two, wondering how long she was going to stay like that. And then, suddenly, she sat up, brushing her hair back from her face, her cheeks raw. For the first time, I saw her as an ordinary person. A stressed-out mom.
She drew in a deep breath. Leaning over, she took her purse from the passenger seat and set it in her lap. Then she opened a small packet and pulled a wet wipe across her face, cleaning up the mascara that had run down her cheeks. Methodically, she began to rebuild her makeup, a process that she executed with impressive efficiency. In a few minutes, she looked as perfectly composed as she’d been when she’d arrived at our door. After looking at herself in the rearview mirror for one long moment, she rubbed her lips together, readjusted the mirror, and backed out of the driveway.
Watching Isabel left me with a strange feeling, like I’d just seen her zip her personality up around her like a second skin.
Slowly, I walked back to Allie’s door and knocked softly. “Als?”
No response.
“It’s me. Tash.”
Still nothing. This past year, I’d thought we’d gotten closer than ever. But maybe there was a limit to how close I was allowed to get.
Still, it was unlike her to not say anything at all. Tentatively, I turned the handle and pushed the door open a few inches. “Allie?”
She was lying on the bed, curled on her side, one arm drawn up around her face. At first, I thought she was ignoring me. But then I saw the slackness of her mouth, the slow rise and fall of her chest. I stepped into the room and walked over to the bed. I crouched down and gently touched her hand, expecting her to wake up. But she didn’t move. A strand of black hair was caught in the corner of her mouth, and the skin around her eyes looked red and puffy.
She had cried herself unconscious.
CHAPTER 34
From my position on the couch, I study Macnamara’s face.
Over the past few years, Allie’s rages had faded from memory until I’d almost convinced myself they couldn’t have happened like I remembered. How many times had I seen her get that way? Only a handful, in all the years we’d known each other. Afterward, she never talked about it. She reverted seamlessly back to her usual self, and I found myself disoriented. Maybe those episodes hadn’t been as big a deal as I’d thought. Maybe that was just how some people expressed themselves.
But talking to Macnamara, seeing his disquiet, I realize: Those weren’t temper tantrums. Or theatrics, as Giles called them. They were something else, something out of Allie’s control. That day at the house, when I’d heard her screaming, I’d suddenly understood Isabel’s insistence that Allie not live with her anymore. Being around Allie when she was like that was terrifying.
Macnamara steps away from the sliding glass door. “Anyway, that’s when things got too much for me,” he says. “After that argument, I told myself Allie wasn’t my responsibility—not in that way, anyhow. That’s what she had a therapist for.”
A dog barks outside, three short yaps.
“A therapist?” I say. After Seabrook, Allie swore off counseling, despite Isabel’s constant nagging. I remember Allie sitting in her bedroom in the Via Montemar house, filing her nails and telling me: Girl, those counselors don’t have a clue. You want to hear all the diagnoses they’ve tried out on me? ADD, BPD, HPD . . . They’re not happy unless they can sum me up in three letters.
“Allie wasn’t seeing a therapist,” I tell Macnamara. “She hated therapists.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. She was seeing one.”
“When? For how long?” I would’ve noticed—wouldn’t I?—Allie leaving the apartment for therapy sessions. But then I remember how often Allie had been “busy” that semester, how Greg and I frequently didn’t know where she was.
“Since . . .” Macnamara thinks for a second. “I guess it was that November.”
“Why? Why would she suddenly go back to therapy?”
He folds his arms over his chest. “She really didn’t talk to you much, did she?”
“We talked a lot,” I say, a defensive note creeping into my voice. “All the time.”
“She went because she’d decided to get sober,” he says.
Allie had resolved to get sober a million times before. “What was special about this time? Why did she need a therapist then?”
He shrugs. And there it is again, the evasiveness Ruiz warned me about. I have the feeling he knows more than he’s willing to say. “Maybe it was the photos,” he says. “In that magazine. The drama that caused with her parents.”
