Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret (19 page)

T
he cab driver said, “Here? You want me to leave you here?” “Yes. Yes. Here. Just stop.”

He pulled over to the side of the highway and I handed him a twenty. He said, “That's too much,” but I was already out of the car by then.

I darted across the highway. I heard the cab driver scream at me and a truck honking and brakes screeching but it was all just background noise. I jumped over the median and booted it to the other side.

Pebbles got wedged in my sandals but I barely broke my stride. I only stopped once to ask a bunch of guys if they'd seen a girl with green hair and a black dress. They started making Addams Family jokes and I swore at them and kept going.

I thought of calling Murdoch but he'd still be at work. I
thought of calling 911 too, but that might make this real. I was still hoping I was wrong. I ran faster.

Branches slapped me in the face and rocks scratched my legs and in a weird way I was sort of glad. I was mad at Dolores, but somehow I felt like I was to blame too. Like this should hurt me too.

I ran down the path and over the spot where it was washed out and through the line of trees and down by the water and up the rock again—and there she was. In her black polka-dot dress.

Lying on the rock.

Not moving. Jut like she'd said she would be.

I started to shake.
Oh my god oh my god oh my god
. I wanted Dad. I really wanted Dad. I closed my eyes and said something like a prayer.

“What are you doing here?”

I opened my eyes and Dolores was sitting up, staring at me. Her face was pale and grey and streaked black with mascara, like some cheap zombie get-up.

“You're okay. You're okay.” That's all I could say.

“No, I'm not.”

My head jerked up. “What? You didn't … you didn't, like, take anything, did you?”

“Take anything?” Dolores laughed, all tough-girl again. “Depends on what you mean. Like a bottle of pills? Some rat poison? Sorry to disappoint you but no. I'm
afraid I can't even do that right. All we had at home was antacid pills and even
I
wasn't prepared to burp myself to death.”

I was breathing well enough to feel angry now. Who did she think she was, making jokes at a time like this?

She put a finger to her cheek like she was running through her options. “I thought I'd maybe drown myself but, thanks to you, I can't even do that any more. There was the risk I'd start to swim. Knives, of course, are gruesome and you'd get nothing for this dress at the consignment store if it had any bloodstains. Guns—same problem. Rope …”

“What's going on?” I said. I was sick of her pathetic need to shock.

“Whatever do you mean?”

I refused to play.

She took that stupid look off her face and sneered at me. “Why are you even asking?”

She had no right to talk to me that way. “You're here,” she said. “I presume that means you know.”

“No. I don't know.” My insides were hissing with rage. I held up Murdoch's phone. “What's this?”

She looked at it. She looked at me. “You … were in my room?”

I shook the phone at her. “What is this? And why did you take Mrs. Burton's compact? Why did you take
Amy's earrings? What else did you take?”
Why did you screw everything up? Why did you ruin my life just as it was getting good again?
That's what I really wanted to know.

Her lower jaw stuck out like a drawer you'd bang your ankle on. She was panting. Tears streamed down her face.

“Why?” she shrieked. “Why shouldn't I be able to have anything? Why should you get to have everything and I get nothing?”

“What does this have to do with me?”

She wiped her nose on her arm. A string of snot drooped from her face to her wrist. She saw it but she just let it hang there. “You get to be tall and beautiful and slim and rich and you get to have the cutest guy in school for two years and when that doesn't work out you get to be a little bit slimmer and get the cutest guy
not
in school.”

I was barely listening. She was just talking garbage. “What does the fact that you stole people's stuff have to do with me?”

“You get everything!
They
get everything! The beautiful houses. The perfect families. Even just having enough money to pay some schmuck like me to clean for them. Why can't I have something too?”

I wanted to kill Dolores. She wasn't making sense. She'd stolen stuff just because she thought she deserved it?

“You're a child,” I said.

“Yeah, right. And you were really mature when Nick dumped you. Everyone knew what was going on but you wanted to play make-believe and skip around, la-di-da, like nothing was happening.”

I was shocked by how much that hurt, but fine. I could be mean too. “At least I didn't steal anything,” I said.

“Murdoch's nothing?”

It was like she'd hit me.

“You told me you didn't want him! You told me you liked Jack Connolly!”

“Jack who? … Oh, right. The goalie. How stupid are you anyway? I didn't even know his name. Are you deaf, blind
and
stupid? Of course I wanted Murdoch.”

This was so unfair. “So why didn't you take him?”

“Why? Because he obviously wanted you.”

“That's not my fault!”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. You can't help being beautiful. You can't help ruining things for me.”

“I wouldn't have had anything to do with him if you hadn't said to go for it. You
told
me to go for it.”

“Of course I did. Why would I even want him if he wanted you? Not all of us are masochists, you know.”

She had no shame.

Dolores turned away and swayed back and forth on the edge of the rock. She was destroying both our lives, but somehow it was my fault. I would have loved to
just push her in the lake and be done with her. I leaned against a tree and looked at the sky. I was missing dinner at Murdoch's. His mother would probably hate me now too.

I'd been crazy to think things were all better. This was my life now. This was the way things went for people like me. Cleaning ladies. Losers.

I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. I just had to fix this as best I could, then move on. I'd moved on before. I could do it again.

“Where are Amy's earrings?” I kept my voice flat.

I thought Dolores was going to fight me, but she didn't. She put her hand out and opened her fist.

“Here—” She didn't look at me.

I walked over and took them.
Why?
That's what I thought. They were small, nothing-special drop-earrings. One of them had three diamonds. The other had two. Dolores would never wear something like this.

“Was the diamond on this one already missing?” I said.

She shook her head and kept looking out at the lake. “No. I didn't know they were worth anything when I took them. They looked like junk to me. I put them in my bag. When I got home, a diamond was gone.”

My insides felt hot. I didn't trust myself to say anything.

“I never meant to take anything valuable.” Her face was distorted from trying not to cry. “I didn't know until
Amy phoned and by then it was too late. I looked everywhere for it.”

I clamped my teeth together to keep from screaming.

She inhaled a jittery little sob. “I don't have anything in my life. I never get anything. I just wanted to have some harmless little things that nobody cared about—but I couldn't even get that. I know you hate me and I know you think I'm stupid, but you don't understand. I organized this whole thing. I made the T-shirts. I wrote the ads, built the website, e-mailed the TV station. And what happens: You get to be star of the TV show. You get the Mary Quant dress. You get the guy. You get to be Grace Kelly and I'm the Leprechaun. So hate me. What difference does it make? What do I care? I'm used to it.”

I did hate her, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that. “What else did you take from

Amy?”

“A bracelet. Some forks. That's it.”

The sun was beginning to set. It was going down earlier these days. Summer was almost over.

“I don't have any money,” Dolores said. “I mean, not enough to replace the diamond. I owed my parents some and I had to pay it back to them. So you see, killing myself was really my only option. At least someone else would have to deal with the problem then.” She gave this wet laugh.

It was the laugh that put me over the top. “Get up,” I said. “I mean it. Go home. I'm not going to have you on my conscience. I'll fix the earrings—but you have to find everything else you took and put it in my mailbox. By tomorrow. At noon.”

She didn't get up right away. I was just about to grab her by the collar when she rose on her own. She walked past without looking at me. The walk of shame, I thought.

“Leave a note explaining where everything's from,” I said, and watched her go. I hoped it was for good.

I
got to the side of the highway and called a cab on Murdoch's cell phone. I don't know how Dolores got home. I didn't care.

On the way back, I phoned Murdoch and apologized for missing dinner. I didn't tell him what really happened. I just made up some stupid excuse about Dolores and me having a fight. He said it was okay. His mother understood. Families with crazy people in them understand stuff like that.

When I got home, I dumped the yogourt container out on my desk. I had $1,760. I had no idea what diamonds cost.

I called the Morrises and asked for Meghan. When Dolores got on, I told her that I'd divided the work schedule up, that we'd each do half. I gave her her list of names and reminded her to drop the stuff off for me. It was all very businesslike. I pictured her on the other end of the phone with beige hair again.

The next day at lunchtime, I brought the earrings to the jewellery store where Mom had bought my graduation necklace. The man said that I was lucky it was just the small diamond missing. He could replace it for $1,680. He wouldn't be able to do it for another week.

“Please,” I said. “I really, really need it by tomorrow.” I made my eyes as big and green as possible. He tapped the counter with a finger. I could feel him softening.

“My mother's Kristi Wickwire. She gets a lot of stuff done here.”

He looked up. “Oh. Mrs. Wickwire.” He turned the earring over in his fingers. “Let me see what I can do for you.”

*

That afternoon when I got home, there was an envelope for me in the mailbox. I took it upstairs and laid the stuff out on my bed. It was mostly junk. Even that picture from Frank's place wasn't one of the good ones. Other than Amy's stuff, the ten-dollar Walmart gift card from the Oreskoviches was probably the most valuable thing there. I shook my head. Who'd even bother taking stuff like this? I didn't understand Dolores. And then, all of a sudden, I did.

I pictured Dolores in Amy's bedroom. I saw her look over her shoulder, make sure no one was around. I saw her take a breath, open the drawer to the bedside table. I saw her hand reach inside—then something happened and I felt sick.

It wasn't Dolores's hand I saw any more. It was mine.
My
hand in Amy's drawer.
My
hand in Frank's kitchen.
My
hand beside Mrs. Burton's washing machine.
My
hand in the Mosers' bookshelves.

I turned away from the things on the bed.

But I didn't take anything!

I was different from Dolores. I wasn't a thief! There was no comparison between stealing someone's earrings and …

I couldn't even say the words to myself. I knew I was wrong.

Dolores had only taken junk—or at least only meant to take junk. I'd been looking for something valuable. I'd wanted people's secrets. I'd wanted proof that I was okay. I needed to know that all these people were just as defective as I was.

Dolores and I had both only taken what we needed to make ourselves feel better.

How much would Mrs. Burton care about her missing compact? Probably not a heck of a lot. How much would she care that I knew about the drinking …?

I
was the thief.

The compact, at least, could be returned.

I
was sitting in the Rebel with my face in the crook of Murdoch's neck. I loved that he didn't smell of cologne or aftershave, that he just smelled of skin and hair and Murdoch.

“You can tell me,” he said.

I rocked my face back and forth. No, I couldn't.

I didn't want to rat Dolores out. That's what I tried to believe but I knew I wasn't that noble. I knew the real reason I didn't want to tell him about the stealing was that then I'd feel obliged to tell him what I'd done too. And somehow that seemed so much worse than a little pilfering. At some level, I'd been looking to hurt people. Dolores hadn't.

I'd managed to return everything she'd taken, except for Amy's earrings. It was pretty easy. I just dropped the stuff off on my regular cleaning day. I don't think anyone had missed anything.

The earrings were different. I'd gone to pick them up the next day at the jeweller's. I gave him all the money I'd saved over the summer and I was still over $100 short. I hadn't realized how much the tax was going to be. I promised to bring it later that day.

He put the earrings in a little black velvet box and said, “Don't worry about it. Your mother's a good customer.”

I thanked him and took the earrings, and thought about Dolores all the way to Amy's. Nineteen hundred bucks was a lot of money to me—but it was nothing too. My parents would wonder how I hadn't managed to save anything over the summer and maybe they'd get a little mad, but if I needed anything they'd write the cheques. Dad was a doctor. Mom had her own business. I was taken care of.

Amy was there when I arrived and she stayed the whole time I cleaned. I had the feeling she didn't trust me any more.

Just before it was time to go, I took a deep breath and went downstairs. She was at the kitchen table, arranging flowers in a vase.

“Are these the earrings you were looking for?” I held them out to her and her eyes went wide.

“I just emptied the vacuum cleaner and I noticed something shiny and …” She looked up at me. I stopped.

“Oh. What luck,” she said. She put the earrings on the counter.

I knew she didn't believe me. I was just lucky to be Dr. Wickwire's daughter.

“I'll put the vacuum cleaner away and then I'll get going,” I said.

“Sure. Thanks.”

I was down the hall when Amy added, “By the way, how's your friend?”

“Oh. Uh.” I couldn't lie again. “She's better than I thought.”

Amy smiled. She was a nice person.

*

“I miss Dolores,” I said into Murdoch's neck. “Then call her,” he said.

But I didn't call Dolores. I couldn't. Stubbornness was another one of my little secrets.

*

I came home from the Mosers' a few days later and Mom said, “There's a message for you.”

I kicked off my shoes and went into the kitchen. “Oh, yeah?” I wasn't that interested. I was starving.

“Dolores called. It's sad news, I'm afraid. One of your clients died. Frank … um … MacSomething.”

I froze with my hand on the cupboard door.

“Poor Dolores. She was there when it happened apparently. She's pretty broken up about it … Oh, sweetheart. Don't cry. He was an old man. I think Dolores said eighty-two? It's often for the best …”

But that's not why I was crying.

I hadn't called Frank. I'd promised him but I hadn't called. I hadn't played cribbage with him. I hadn't visited him.

Dolores had been there.