After Image, page 19
“What about Allie?” she asks.
“Why did you never get angry with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“No matter what she did, you accepted it. You never got mad.” I can feel my voice starting to wobble. “Even after what she did. Even after she ruined everything.”
CHAPTER 40
November 2009
Our family sat around the kitchen table, eating the only meal Mom really excelled at making: spaghetti bolognese. Giles had been away the past few weeks, promoting his newest book, and while he was gone, we’d eaten dinners he definitely would not have approved of: PB&J sandwiches, bacon and eggs, takeout from Bamboo River.
Mom passed the salad bowl to Giles. Tonight, she’d even put candles in the center of the table, between the serving dishes. “It’s nice for us to all be together again, isn’t it?” She waited for Giles to respond, but he seemed not to have heard her.
He was looking at a text on his phone. Finally, he glanced up and said, “Oh. Yes. Nice.”
Allie and I exchanged a look. We’d noticed a definite atmosphere in the house ever since Giles got back from his trip the week before. He spent most evenings secluded in his study, talking on the phone to his agent, Zuri, or working on research for his next book. Meanwhile, Mom prowled around the house doing random chores, waiting for Giles to come out and talk to her.
Giles stabbed a spinach leaf with his fork and began eating. I waited for him to make a joke about Mom’s cooking, which he always teased her about, but he didn’t say anything. For a moment, the only sound in the dining room was utensils scraping against plates.
Mom poured herself more wine. I tried to make eye contact with Allie, but she was staring down at the table, using her fork to dig little holes in the tablecloth.
“So, tell us about New York,” Mom said to Giles. “You haven’t talked much about it since you’ve been back. What was it like?”
Giles wiped at the edges of his mouth with his napkin. “Those book events are all the same. There’s not much to tell.”
More silence.
“Well, it’s good to have you home,” she said brightly. “I’ve got that faculty dinner next Friday, and you know what a drag those are. At least you can distract me from all the teacher-talk.”
Giles looked up. “Next Friday?”
“Yes.” She’d put her hair up tonight and put on a bit of makeup. Mom never wore makeup at home.
“I can’t go,” he said abruptly. “Not Friday.”
Mom’s face fell. “But you said you would. It’s on the calendar.”
“Well, Zuri’s scheduled me at a book festival in Boston,” Giles said, frowning. “She has me flying out on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday! But you only just got back.”
Giles let out an exasperated sigh. “This is the job, Elena. I have to go where they send me, at least until the publishers are satisfied that this book is going to sell better than the last one.”
Allie raised an eyebrow at me. Giles hardly ever mentioned his last book, which had been an undeniable flop. Sometimes, if Allie was in a mischievous mood, she’d work the book into the conversation just to annoy him.
Mom blinked rapidly, tears gathering on her eyelashes.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Elena,” he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing at the edges of his eyes. “It’s just a dinner. I’ll go to the next one.”
“The next one isn’t until next year,” she said tightly.
Giles set his glasses down with a thump.
I stared at him. What was his problem? He’d been on edge this whole week. On Monday, when he’d found Allie in his office looking for a spare pen, he’d shouted at her, which had seemed over the top even for Giles.
“And you’ve been traveling this whole fall,” Mom said. A muscle in her neck quivered. “When will you take a break?”
The air in the room felt thick. I willed Allie to say something, anything. This was her cue to crack a joke, change the subject, break the news that she was failing French again.
“I just don’t see why there have to be so many of those events,” Mom said. “Zuri knows you have a family—”
“Yes, and it’s the money from my work that feeds this family.” Giles balled up his napkin and threw it on the table.
“I’m not asking you to abandon your work. I’m just saying, there’s got to be some balance . . .” She broke off. “You missed Allie’s birthday last month,” she said, more forcefully. “And Natasha’s the month before that. I don’t think it’s me who’s missing the point.”
“I’m not one of your students, so please spare me the lecture,” he snapped.
Allie gazed, unblinking, at Giles.
“This is my career,” he said to Mom. “Forgive me if I happen to—”
“Oh, will you shut up already?” Allie snapped.
I drew in a sharp breath.
Giles turned to her. “Excuse me?” His eyes were dangerously bright.
“Oh, c’mon, Giles. How long are you going to let this drag out?” she said, pushing her plate away from her. “Weeks? Months?”
“Allie, honey . . . ,” Mom said, reaching out to her.
Allie pulled away from her touch. “I want to know,” Allie said to Giles, her voice rising. “How long are you going to wait for her to figure it out?”
He pointed a finger at Allie. “Watch yourself, young lady.”
Was it my imagination, or did he look suddenly frightened?
Allie stood up. “There’s no conference in Boston, okay?” she told my mother. “He’s going there to meet Zuri. Because he’s fucking her. They’re fucking.” She carefully enunciated each syllable.
“Allie!” Giles stood up too. “That’s enough.”
She spun toward him. “What? You’re not even trying to hide it. Her texts are right there on your phone. I saw them when I was in your office. Lucky for you, Elena’s too nice of a person to look through your stuff. Or wait—is that what you were hoping she would do?”
“Go to your room,” Giles said. His voice was deathly quiet. “Right now.”
She laughed. “I’m not five. You can’t send me to my—”
“Go to your room!” he roared, leaning forward over the table.
I’d never been scared of Giles before, but I was frightened now. That temper, which he held in check most of the time, had finally erupted.
Allie stared at him for a long moment, and I wondered how she could look him straight in the face when it seemed like any minute he might lunge over the table at her. But she wasn’t intimidated. She was calm, so calm.
She turned to Mom. “It’s not you, you know. This is just what he does. He’ll let it drag on until you find out, and then you’ll save him the trouble of having to end things. It’s what he does to all his girlfriends. It’s what he did to Isabel.”
Mom’s face had frozen into an expression that I wished I could unsee. I stared down at my plate, where the marinara sauce looked gruesome against the white plate.
“Elena, listen,” Giles said, changing his tone.
But it was too late. Mom pushed her chair away from the table and, without a word, walked out of the room.
CHAPTER 41
Mom sits across from me on the couch, her face pale. We don’t talk about that night. In all the years since it happened, we’ve never once brought it up.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “I never held that against Allie.”
To my surprise, I find that I’m crying. “You must have. I mean—”
That night marked the end of everything. Afterward, Giles moved out, and soon after that, divorce proceedings began. At some point, he and Mom must have reached an agreement about living arrangements, because Allie and I ended up staying in the house on Via Montemar with Mom for the remainder of our senior year. To give us some sense of normalcy. But after high school, it was agreed, Giles would sell the house, Mom would get her own place, and Allie and I would go off to college. The terms of the prenup allowed Mom to get a chunk of money upon signing the divorce papers, but there would be no alimony, no ongoing support.
My mother reaches over and rubs my knee. “Tasha. Things with Giles, they were a mess long before Allie said anything about . . . that woman. The relationship wasn’t working. I mean, it was all very romantic in the beginning. I was so dazzled by him, by his talent. So, it took me a while to see certain things.”
“Like what?”
She lifts her hands helplessly. “Like the fact that he’d never managed to settle down with anyone. Not with Isabel, and not with any of his girlfriends after her either. That he wasn’t very good with you kids. After the first year, things were rocky. He dropped out, emotionally. I felt so alone.”
Mom’s never talked to me this way before. The way she might’ve talked to Allie. I look at her sitting there, in jeans and a T-shirt she bought at the farmers’ market twenty years ago.
“You seemed so happy together.”
Mom leans forward, making sure I’m paying close attention. “Tasha, look. Even if Giles hadn’t . . . you know . . . we wouldn’t have lasted. So, no, I didn’t blame Allie. If anything, I was grateful to her.”
“Grateful?” I say in disbelief.
“Yes, grateful,” she says. Her face is open, calm. “I wasn’t happy. But I hadn’t wanted to face it. Allie saved me from going on like that for . . . months. Years, maybe.”
I feel disoriented, the way I do some nights when I sit up in bed and think there’s an intruder in the room before I realize it’s just my reflection in the closet mirror.
Mom didn’t think Allie had taken anything from her. I was the one who felt that way.
“Poor Allie,” Mom says quietly. “She felt terrible about it afterward.”
“Did she?” She never seemed the least bit sorry to me. When Giles left our house, after he’d walked down the front path and deposited a suitcase in the trunk of his car, Allie stood at her bedroom window and gave him the finger as he drove away.
“She really did.” Mom brushes a knuckle under her nose. “Do you know what she said to me, the day after that awful dinner? She said, ‘If you want me to leave, I’ll go.’ She knew there was nowhere for her to go at that point, except to that terrible boarding school Giles had picked out.” Mom shakes her head. “Of course I didn’t want her to go. I told her that I wanted her to stay. But I’ll always remember her saying that. ‘If you want me to leave, I’ll go.’”
I pick at the worn material of the armchair. I’ve never fully understood, have I, the feelings Allie had about Mom and me? It wasn’t until the beginning of our freshman year at LACSA that I started to get it.
Mom had invited us up to Reseda so she could show us the new house she’d bought, the place she was preparing to move into as soon as the house on Via Montemar sold. When she led us into the living room, her face flushed with pleasure, I couldn’t help feeling a twist of disappointment. The room was barely big enough for all three of us to stand in at once, and the paneling on the walls was dark and old fashioned.
“Cute,” Allie said.
Cramped, I thought.
“C’mon. I’ll give you the full tour,” Mom said. She led us through the tiny kitchen to a door that led into a tangled backyard. She didn’t seem to mind the smallness of the place or its general sense of faded disrepair. Her hair was drawn up in a ponytail, and she had paint stains on her shirt. She’d gained back the weight she’d lost during the divorce, and her jeans no longer gapped around her hips. But something else was different too. She looked comfortable here, I realized. It was only then that it hit me: how she’d never seemed quite at home in the Via Montemar house, with its vaulted ceilings and sleek leather couches.
“And in the spring, I’ll put some raised beds out here,” Mom was saying.
Behind her back, Allie winked at me. She’d been telling me all year: Elena will bounce back. Just you wait. And she’d been right.
“There’s also a room above the garage that I can turn into an apartment, rent out for some extra money.” She was so proud. She’d never owned her own home before.
“It’s nice,” Allie said, squeezing her shoulder. “Really nice.” She sounded convincing.
“Now, I have one more thing to show you,” Mom said. She grinned as she beckoned us into the hallway. Down the hall from the master bedroom were two very small rooms situated across the hall from each other. In each one, she’d put a double bed, a desk, and a chair.
“This one’s for you, Tasha,” she said, gesturing at the room with the blue curtains. “And this one’s for Allie.” Allie’s had yellow curtains and a brightly colored quilt on the bed.
I noticed the nameplates on the doors before Allie did. Little ceramic ovals with our names inscribed in cursive. Natasha. Allie. I laughed and turned to catch Allie’s gaze, waiting for her to roll her eyes at this last touch, which was sweet but a little cheesy.
But Allie wasn’t looking at me. She had one hand pressed over her mouth, and a small, distressed sound came out of her throat. Suddenly, Mom put her arms around Allie and held her tight.
“What’s going on?” I said, bewildered. “What’s wrong?”
But neither of them seemed to have heard me.
“Is it really for me?” Allie asked, her voice small and muffled. “That room?” She was crying silently, her shoulders shaking.
Mom smoothed Allie’s hair with her hand. “Of course it is. Of course. You know there’s always going to be a place for you here.”
At that, Allie started to sob.
CHAPTER 42
At three o’clock, a black car glides up to the curb outside Mom’s house. I jog down the front steps as the driver gets out and walks around to open the back door for me. I look around, wondering what the neighbors will think. This kind of thing is not the norm in Reseda.
I settle into the soft leather upholstery of the back seat, noting the tinted windows, the television screen set into the console behind the driver’s seat. As the driver climbs back behind the wheel, he asks me if the temperature is all right, and when I nod, he rolls up the window that divides the front of the car from the back.
And then I’m all alone with my thoughts.
Back then, in the house on Via Montemar, I’d thought our family had been happy. Watching bad movies in the living room, cooking grilled cheese sandwiches in the swanky kitchen, swimming in the pool on hot summer nights. But now I realize—all those memories are of Allie and me. Where were our parents on those evenings? I can’t remember. If things between Giles and Mom had started to deteriorate, I’d been too wrapped up in my own world to notice.
That fall, I’d been deep in the fever of applying to colleges. All my life, I’d known that paying for college would be a struggle. Mom’s salary as a high school teacher hardly stretched to support us; it wouldn’t make a dent in the tuition to a good university. So I’d spent most of high school fighting for a valedictorian spot. I needed those scholarships. But after Giles came into the picture, everything changed.
All of a sudden, there was so much money. Enough to pay for a house with an ocean view, enough for summer vacations in Kauai. Enough for college tuition for two daughters. Which meant that, suddenly, I had options. For the first time, I could let myself really dream. And as soon as I did, I knew I wanted so much more than UC Berkeley. I wanted the East Coast. I wanted Ivy League. I wanted two-hundred-year-old brick buildings dusted with snow.
That fall, I filled out my college applications with a feeling of euphoria. Brown, Williams, Amherst, Cornell. The names alone felt like magic. A way to change my life forever.
And then: the divorce happened. To me, it seemed to have fallen right out of the sky, an asteroid crashing into the middle of our perfect life. Giles moved out, and my mother turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Allie and I took over cooking dinners because Mom no longer had the energy. I spent the weekends doing laundry and studying for my AP classes.
Three months later, my acceptance letter from Williams arrived. When I showed it to Mom, she just sighed. Oh, Tasha. She didn’t have to say anything else. There was no way we could afford it now.
By that point, the deadline to apply for financial aid had passed. So. There I was, with an acceptance letter to a first-class college I couldn’t attend. And like a fool, I hadn’t applied to any backup schools.
In the end, I swallowed my pride and applied to LACSA, where Allie had already gotten in. LACSA was the kind of place where a lackluster GPA was no barrier to entry. Where an application like mine, even submitted late in the spring, got some attention. They offered me a full ride, which at least meant that Mom wouldn’t have to worry about tuition payments on top of everything else.
Outside the car window, the city is streaking by—tall office buildings, massive billboards. And then we’re exiting the highway, heading left on Las Virgenes, and I let my head fall back against the seat.
Is it any wonder I felt cheated back then? By Giles. By Allie.
But staying on at LACSA—I had only myself to blame for that. I could have applied for a transfer after freshman year. That had been my plan all along. My first fall semester there, I spent hours drafting the essay I would submit with my transfer application. But somehow, as Allie and I fell into the rhythm of our life there, the urgency of the transfer application faded. It was so easy to be at LACSA with her. With Allie, I had a sister, a best friend, and a social life all rolled into one.
So the transfer deadline came and went. I told Mom I’d forgotten about it, which touched off one of the few real arguments we’d ever had. That place is making you lazy, she told me.
So what if it was? What I’d realized was: Being at LACSA was a relief. There, I didn’t have to fight to be the smartest, the best. I didn’t have to prove myself. And I liked that. For once, I wanted to have it easy. For once, I wanted to coast.
But the real reason I never left? When it came down to it, I couldn’t leave Allie.
The night she told my mom about Zuri, I’d been furious with her. Later that night, I’d gone upstairs to her bedroom and pushed open the door. Allie was lying on her bed with her noise-canceling headphones on, her eyes closed. When she felt me sit down on the bed next to her, she opened her eyes. After a moment, she scooted up to a sitting position and settled the headphones around her neck.
