ABC Amber LIT Converter (13 page)

“I need a six-letter word for deceive,” Justine said, not looking up from the puzzle on her lap. She put the end of the pencil in her mouth, nibbled on the eraser.

“Mislead,” said Rhonda.

“That’s seven letters, dear.”

“Delude,” said Clem, not looking up from his own puzzle.

“That’s it!” cried out Justine. “That’s the one. Thank you, sweetie.” She began penciling busily.

“I’m going to go look for the photo albums,” Rhonda announced. She’d told them she was working on a new drawing and wanted some old photos to work from.

“I think they’re mostly in our bedroom closet,” Justine said.

“I might have moved them,” Clem told her.

“I’ll go check,” Rhonda offered.

Past the closed door to her old bedroom, now used only for storage and the rare overnight guest, and into Clem and Justine’s room, Rhonda made her way to the large closet and pulled back the folding slatted door. The left side was her father’s, the right, her mother’s. Marriage is full of such cut-and-dry arrangements, Rhonda thought, then felt that small ache she sometimes got at the back of her skull—the one that told her she might be alone forever, not a fate that she chose but rather a fate that seemed to have been chosen for her. Then she thought of Warren, of holding hands in the cemetery. Dare she even hope that this might go somewhere? Did she really want it to?

She found the leaning stack of photo albums on the shelf above her father’s Civil War costumes, which were hung in plastic bags from the dry cleaners.

“Found ’em!” she hollered over her shoulder, not realizing Clem was right behind her. He helped her get them down. They were mostly bound in cracked and stained fake leather withFamily Photographs andMemories embossed in curly gold script.

“What is it you’re looking for?” Clem asked as he helped her carry the albums down the hall and into the kitchen, where there was better light.

“Pictures of Lizzy, mostly.”

Clem smiled weakly. His already ashen face lost whatever hint
of color it may have had. Her father, Rhonda thought, looked terribly old.

He was still tall and trim, his hair gone to a distinguished salt-and-pepper. But his breath had a whistling rasp to it and he coughed often. Smoker’s cough. The hollow hack of a man twenty years older.

Over the years, both Justine and Rhonda had begged him to give up cigarettes. He tried a few times, half-hearted attempts, really just to placate his wife and daughter. But he would end up sneaking cigarettes in the garage, at work—making up lies for reasons to duck outside for a smoke. He took the trash out twice a day, went to the store for milk when there was still half a quart left. He was fooling no one. Just going through the motions.

“Why the interest in Lizzy all of a sudden?” he asked.

“I had a dream about her. A friend suggested I do a drawing of it,” she explained.

Clem nodded grimly.

Rhonda decided they should get it over with quickly, close the books back up and tuck them away in the closet, laying the past to rest again, all but forgotten, gathering dust on a shelf. She carried them out to the kitchen table, where her father settled into the chair next to her.

“Did you ever reschedule that interview at the science center?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Have you sent out any more résumés?”

“Uh, no,” she admitted. “This Ernie thing has been taking all my time.”

“But you’re not exactly getting paid for it,” he reminded her. And she knew he was right. What little money she had in savings was quickly dwindling, and those student loan bills would start arriving soon. But she couldn’t think about that now. She put it out of her head and opened the first photo album.

The first photo album starred Rhonda—Rhonda as a scrunchy-faced infant, Rhonda in Clem’s arms, Rhonda in her high chair, covered with grape jelly, grinning. Toward the end of the album, around the time the photos began to feature Rhonda on her own two feet—Rhonda picking a dandelion, Rhonda with arms outstretched to a blurry Clem—Daniel, Aggie, Peter, and Lizzy started appearing in the pictures. There were photos of them all celebrating the Fourth of July, with Peter wearing a cardboard party hat, blowing out a cake with four candles. They were all there at Rhonda’s first and second birthdays, and there were two cakes, one for her, one for Lizzy. There were no pictures in the album of her parents before Rhonda came along. No photos of their quiet wedding performed by a justice of the peace. Of their honeymoon trip to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. It was like their real life started once the baby was born.

In later albums, there were pictures of Lizzy, Rhonda, and Daniel in the teacups at Disney World, the two girls looking impossibly small, wearing Mickey Mouse ears with their names stitched across the front in red cursive; all three kids meeting Davey Crockett at Wild West World—Peter, who looked to be about eleven, wearing a matching coonskin cap. The Farrs and the Shales spent nearly every holiday together, like one big extended family: here was a picture of everyone but Justine, surrounding a monstrously huge Thanksgiving turkey, and another of them sitting in a sea of festive crumpled paper and ribbons on Christmas morning. Justine was the photographer of the family, so she was in few of the photos. Clem hated pictures—hated taking them and having them taken—so there were many shots of him turning away: a blurred profile, a raised arm, a fuzzy, unidentifiable ghost of a man.

RHONDA OPENED ANOTHERalbum, thumbed through the plastic-covered pages, traveling forward in time, and found the
pictures her mother had taken the last night they performedPeter Pan . There was a shot of all of them lined up in their costumes, holding hands, taking bows. There was Daniel carrying Lizzy in her Captain Hook costume high up on his shoulders. Daniel sword-fighting with Peter after the play. Daniel and Clem standing together drinking beer. Daniel dancing with Laura Lee Clark, who wore a slinky sequined gown. Rhonda searched the photos, searched Daniel’s face for a sign of his leaving, of his having had enough somehow. All she noticed that was different on Daniel’s face was his lack of mustache. He was clean-shaven that night, a sign, maybe, that he was ready for a change.

He chose some other life,Rhonda thought as she ran a finger over his smooth face. And then Lizzy, her secret twin, Captain Hook, stopped speaking, and eventually joined her father, leaving for school one morning never to return.

These are the choices people make,Rhonda thought, trying to convince herself such a simple explanation could account for such loss.

“God,” Rhonda said, pointing to the photo of Daniel and Laura Lee, “look how dressed up she is! Like she was going to the Oscars or something.” Then her eye was drawn to something else: “Check it out, Dad—he’s got his hand on her ass!”

Clem nodded. “I think Daniel’s hand was quite familiar with Laura Lee’s derriere.”

“Were they sleeping together?”

Clem nodded again. “It wasn’t exactly a secret. Actually, Aggie always thought Laura Lee had something to do with what happened to Daniel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like maybe Laura Lee was pressuring him. Maybe she told him she was pregnant. Of course, Aggie had all kinds of…theories.”

“Jesus, I had no idea,” Rhonda said.

She flipped backward again and came across a photo she hadn’t remembered. She and Lizzy wearing matching powder-blue windbreakers. They had their arms around each other and were standing in front of Lizzy and Peter’s house. She and Lizzy must have been about nine or ten. It was fall—there was a pile of freshly raked leaves behind them. They had the same haircuts, same face shape, they were even dressed like twins. Twins in rumpled clothes. Plump, scarecrow girls with big, haunted eyes. They held on to each other tightly, like their young lives depended on it. They were smiling, but it seemed a forced smile, agive a big smile for the camera, stop looking so sullen and say cheese kind of smile. She wondered who took the picture—Aggie, Daniel? Through her own smile, she saw a glint of metal that must have been her retainer.

She let her fingers touch her lost friend’s face.

“Can I keep this one?” Rhonda asked her father.

“Take the whole album, Ronnie. Your mother and I don’t look at them much anymore. In fact, I think I even have that old video ofPeter Pan if you want it.”

Rhonda nodded. She’d forgotten there was a video. Clem shuffled back into the bedroom and returned in a few minutes, videotape in hand.

He looked relieved to see it all go; like if you took away the proof, you could imagine whatever you like—even erase Daniel and Lizzy from the landscape of their lives.

Could it be that easy?

JUNE 20, 1993

LAURA LEE HELPEDGreta with her crocodile costume, and when she showed it to everyone at last, they were all quite impressed. Even Peter was pleased, and he was not one to give compliments easily.

“You’re some crocodile,” he acknowledged with a wide grin.

The costume was made from a series of cardboard boxes. The largest box was the torso, and it was where Greta hid inside and crawled around. Another long, narrow box made up the head, and a series of boxes attached to each other with string going from largest to smallest made up the tail. The crocodile’s feet were made from four small boxes stapled to the body. The whole thing was painted bright green, and covered (everyone figured this must have been Laura Lee’s touch) with silver foil scales. The narrow box up front had round egg-carton eyes and a painted-on toothy grin that sparkled in the
light (the teeth were made from glued-on tin foil also). Greta navigated through a small slit cut in the front of the body, just above the head.

“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock!” she cried out, her voice muffled as she clambered her way around the stage, chasing Lizzy, cardboard tail dragging, foil scales and teeth gleaming.

Even out of costume, she chased Lizzy. Greta took great delight in sneaking up on poor unsuspecting Captain Hook during breaks, or popping out from behind a tree first thing in the morning.

“Tick tock!” she snarled, snapping her arms menacingly as Lizzy jumped back.

“See,” Rhonda whispered when the others were out of earshot.

“I told you she had a crush on you.”

This got Rhonda a strong thump on the shoulder from Lizzy’s hook, which got caught in her nightgown, ripping it.

“Hey!” Rhonda shouted, fingering the rip. “I’m gonna make you sew this.” But Lizzy had walked away and was standing with the crocodile.

GRETA, AFTER PUTTINGso much effort into the costume, was angry that she wasn’t in more scenes.

“Ticktock ,” she snapped at Peter. “Shouldn’t the crocodile be there during the war with the lost boys, pirates, and Indians?”

“I don’t know, Tock. I guess I could stick you in here and there.”

Greta smiled to show she was pleased with both the plan to put her in more scenes and the new nickname.

She sat lurking at the edge of the action in nearly every scene, making her clock sounds, watching, just like she had done from the trees, only this time she had a front row seat. She was a part of things.

RHONDA HAD BEENstudiously avoiding her father, using the play as an excuse to be away from home as much as possible. She would run in for meals, let her mother heap tuna sandwiches or pork chops on her plate, while Rhonda sat in her white nightgown and told them little details about her day, like that Peter had let that awful Greta Clark join the play. But she couldn’t avoid her father forever.

“I think it’s time you and I had a talk,” he said to her after dinner, when her mother had cleared the table and was running water in the sink. Rhonda nodded. “Come into the office. You haven’t even seen where I hung your picture.”

So, reluctantly, Rhonda followed him into the office and saw her drawings, tucked behind the new sheet of glass, hanging on the wall beside her father’s desk.

“They’re beautiful drawings,” he told her. “I look at them all the time. You got every detail just right, right down to the buttons on the uniforms.”

Rhonda nodded.

“It’s the best birthday present I ever got.”

She nodded again.

“Ronnie, about what you saw…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rhonda said, staring down at her sneakers.

“Of course it matters. And you deserve an explanation. I made a mistake. And you caught me. But it’s not a mistake I’m going to make again. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Rhonda mumbled.

“What is it you don’t understand?”

“How you can be married to two people at once,” Rhonda said.

“I’m not. I’m married to your mother. And I’m going to stay married to her.”

“But youwere married to Aggie.”

Clem reached into his shirt pocket and took out a cigarette.

“Yes,” he said. “I was once married to Aggie. A long time ago. Before I met your mother.”

“Does Mom know?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was waiting until you were old enough to understand. And now you are.”

But Rhondadidn’t understand. She didn’t understand how you could marry one person, then another. Once you got married, it was supposed to be forever. If she married Peter, she would make sure it lasted. But now, she wasn’t sure she could marry Peter, because, it dawned on her, the fact that his mother and her father had once been married might make them related after all. Her head spun. She had to get out of the office.