Forbidden Sister (31 page)

“What happened?” I asked.

“Let’s just say she took one of her clients too seriously and leave it at that.”

“You don’t see her anymore?”

“She died,” Roxy said, and slammed her fork down
on the plate. “I asked you not to ask questions, M, and the first thing you have me doing is talking about things I don’t want to talk about.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just do your own thing, and don’t interfere with me,” she said sharply.

“All right. Maybe this was a mistake,” I said, looking at my salad.

She was silent, and then she reached for my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s not a mistake. You’ll be all right. You’ll finish school, go to college, and marry a millionaire.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I don’t want to marry a millionaire. I want to marry someone I love, just like Mama did.”

“Okay. Here’s to that,” she said, raising her glass of white wine. “We all need some fantasy, I guess.”

I looked at her, still feeling fury inside me. Maybe I would soon get to understand exactly how she had gotten so under Papa’s skin that he could throw her out.

“And what’s your fantasy, Roxy?”

She thought a moment and shook her head. “I’ve run out of them,” she said. Then she surprised me with a smile. “Maybe you’ll bring some back.”

I wasn’t particularly in the mood for fantasies, either. Reality was a bully. It shoved and pushed its way into your mind, driving rainbow dreams down or out. Dared I think of what my future would be now? Did ambition matter? When would I think about romance again? Roxy had this lovemaking hideaway, the most beautiful dresses, the most expensive perfumes,
probably the best hairstylists in the city, but it all seemed more like ways to trap and entice and had nothing to do with love and romance. Did I dare ask her if she had someone special, ever dreamed of someone special or wanted someone special? What did she see as her future? How long could this go on?

I returned to my room to finish up organizing my things. Soon after, I heard the door buzzer again and listened at the door. It was a woman. She had an English accent. A moment later, I heard footsteps coming my way and stepped back from the door. Roxy opened it, and she and a woman who looked about fifty but was probably older stepped in. She was a few inches taller than Roxy and had her light blond hair parted in the middle and curled at her neck. The most striking feature of her face was her crystal-blue eyes. There probably wasn’t a more perfect nose on any woman in the city. I thought her lips were recently injected with Botox. Actually, she looked like someone who had a plastic surgeon on call. If she looked in the mirror and saw something she didn’t like, she picked up the phone and left the house immediately.

“This is M,” Roxy said. “M, this is Mrs. Brittany.”

I said hello, but she didn’t reply. Instead, she walked in farther and looked me over the way I imagined Southern slave owners at a slave auction looked over new Africans brought into the country.

“With a little work, she could be prettier than you,” Mrs. Brittany said.

I glanced at Roxy and thought I saw fear ripple through her face.

“She’s only fifteen,” Roxy said.

“You weren’t much older,” Mrs. Brittany replied quickly. Roxy forced a smile.

“I was much, much different,” she said.

“Maybe. In my experience, we never know what lies under a young girl’s skin. Are you sexually active?” she asked me.

“What? No.”

She looked surprised and smiled skeptically. Then she grew serious again. “Sorry about your mother. I understand you have horrible relatives.”

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been difficult to leave them on the
Titanic,
” I replied, and she laughed.

Her laugh was deep, more like a rumbling in her chest. Now that she was closer to me, I saw the small birthmark on the bottom left of her chin and the strands of hair with gray roots beginning to expose themselves. Her face was tight, plastic-surgery tight, so that her smile seemed more like a folding than a relaxed movement in her cheeks and lips. How old was she? I wondered.

“Okay. We don’t want to send you back on the
Titanic
. You can stay here with Roxy, but you will have to obey the rules your sister and I have set down.”

“I know. I’m not going to cause any trouble. I know how to keep to myself,” I said.

She tilted her head, gave me an appreciative smile, and looked at Roxy. “I’m surprised you didn’t talk more about her.”

I looked at Roxy, too, to see what her answer would be.

“You knew my memories of my family were painful, Mrs. Brittany. If anyone knew, you did. I wasn’t about to talk about anyone.”

“Yes. Well, let’s see how it goes.” She stared at me again and then smiled. “If she stays looking this young, she could be our Lolita. I get a lot of calls for a Lolita these days, you know. The older men get, the more they look to youth. There’s nothing a man fears more than losing his erection, and most of these men have wives who could discourage the most psychotic rapist. Youth is a valuable commodity. It always has been and always will be.”

“She’s going to college, Mrs. Brittany. She’s got a good inheritance coming. She’s far from the state I was in at her age.”

“Um,” she said, still considering me. “We have college girls, too, you know.” She turned to Roxy. “Clair de Lune has a BA from Columbia. Anyway,” she continued, starting to look bored, “I don’t want to see or hear about any problems, Roxy.”

“You won’t.”

She looked at me again. “You mean to stand there and tell me you’re a virgin, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “I haven’t met the right young man for that.”

“The right young man? I thought you kids today weren’t as discriminating and treated sex as just another recreation.”

“I don’t,” I said firmly.

She shook her head. “It’s amazing how two girls from the same home can be so different,” she said, and
laughed. I saw how uncomfortable Roxy was becoming.

“I’m sure there was no one in your family exactly like you, Mrs. Brittany,” I told her, and she lost her smile for a moment. The silence that fell was heavy. It felt as if all of the oxygen had left the room.

Then she relaxed. “I see in you one quality you share with your sister, being headstrong, fearless. That could be good, or . . .” She turned to leave, then turned back at the door. “It could be disastrous. The trick is knowing when to watch your mouth.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s something you’ll learn while you’re here, and it won’t be a total waste.” She looked at Roxy. “Let’s talk,” she snapped, and walked out.

Roxy glanced at me, nodded, and followed her.

I let out my breath.

From a distance, Mrs. Brittany looked like an attractive, elegant woman, but up close, her true nature showed itself. She wasn’t just tough; she was street tough, with those rough edges of someone who had clawed and scratched her way out of the gutter. Maybe she had learned how to appear dignified, aristocratic, and cultured, but as Mama might say, scratch her skin, and you’ll find an alley cat lurking.

If the devil came as a woman, it would be someone like her, I thought. Roxy wasn’t sensitive to it or perhaps was deliberately blind because of her situation, but I sensed a cruel coldness under her suave, sophisticated appearance. Despite my bravado, she chilled my blood and made my heart thump when she scrutinized me the way she must have scrutinized Roxy.

I hoped I wouldn’t see much of her.

Roxy returned nearly a half hour later. “We’re all right for now,” she said. “She was impressed with you, but she’s very careful about everything. This is a very big enterprise involving very important people, M. I’m just telling you all this so you won’t feel bad about the way she spoke to you.”

“I didn’t feel bad about the way she spoke to me, Roxy. I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. I felt bad about the way she spoke to you.”

“Forget it,” she snapped. “I can handle her. Don’t make trouble.”

I looked away.

“One thing I didn’t bring you here to do, M, is judge me, understand? Go on about your own life, and don’t try to interfere with mine.”

“Okay, okay,” I said.

She stood there staring at me.

“I’ll do what you say,” I promised, and she relaxed.

“We’re going out to dinner tonight. There’s a little Italian restaurant I frequent uptown. I like it because the food’s good and it’s out of the way. You’ll have a good time, but I think we should go to your school tomorrow and get you started again. You can’t mope around here all day. Okay? Okay,” she repeated harshly when I didn’t respond.

“Yes.”

“Good. Take a bubble bath or something, and . . .” She paused. “Stop acting like Papa. Get off your high horse,” she told me, and left.

There I was, immersed in luxury and comfort, but it didn’t bring me happiness and security. The reality seemed clear to me despite the act Roxy performed. She had tried to make it all seem like nothing, but I knew in my heart that I had entered her world, and there were dangers there that I probably had never imagined.

“You’ll like these people, and the food is great,” Roxy told me when we got into the taxi to go to the Italian restaurant. “I’ve been going there for a few years. In case any questions come up, you should know that I told them my family was in Los Angeles,” she added. “It was just easier.”

I didn’t say anything, but I realized that Roxy had to invent a lot of things to get along with people she met, not that her so-called clients were really interested in her, I imagined. She had already clearly implied that it was a no-no to talk about herself and tell anyone what was true. Mrs. Brittany surely insisted that her girls remained mysterious. I understood that was the combination that made them so desirable: beauty and mystery.

The restaurant was cozy. It felt more like eating at someone’s home because of the soft-cushioned chairs, the personal pictures, and the family artifacts. The couple who ran it, Ed and Mary Diana, were both in their mid-sixties and obviously very fond of Roxy. From their conversation, I gathered that they hadn’t
the faintest idea of what Roxy did or how she lived. Between the lines, I picked up that they assumed that she was involved with clothing since she always wore such beautiful and expensive-looking clothes. I realized that she let them believe that she was a buyer for a department store. However, I thought I saw some awareness in Mr. Diana when Roxy introduced him to me. Roxy was careful about what she told them about me, never really saying that I had moved in with her.

I imagined that inventing so much about herself when she spoke to people other than her clients and Mrs. Brittany made it difficult for Roxy ever to grow close with anyone. That was why she had no real friends and, as long as she was doing what she was doing, never would have any. I had to be careful about these thoughts and conclusions. Roxy was as proud and as defiant as ever. She wouldn’t tolerate anyone feeling sorry for her, especially me. She had made that clear today.

The following morning, she took me to school so she could meet Dr. Sevenson and establish herself as my guardian. She had the limousine available to her. When we arrived, we turned a lot of heads and, as Mama would say, set tongues clapping. Roxy tried to look like someone’s guardian, I know, but despite our age difference, she still looked as if she could be the one registering to attend high school. She was in her black fur-lined coat and hat, with her hair in an updo, and very tight slacks with thick high-heeled black shoes. She did restrain herself when it came to her makeup, but Roxy didn’t really need much makeup,
anyway. Heads continued to turn our way when we entered the building and started for the principal’s office.

Our principal, Dr. Sevenson, always struck me as being quite aloof. Everything that had to be done on a day-to-day basis seemed to be delegated to someone else, such as Dr. Walter, Mrs. Morris, or one of the teachers. Most of Dr. Sevenson’s time was spent in public relations, getting funding and new students for the school. She was a stout woman, with teased dark brown hair that looked as if it had been styled and sprayed twenty years ago. The joke was that there were bedbugs living in it. She had a clipped way of speaking, especially if she was speaking to someone from whom she didn’t expect much in the way of funding or anything else. I don’t think I had spoken a half-dozen words to her or she to me since I had begun attending the school.

Her secretary opened the door of her office for us and stepped away, smiling as if she had accomplished some great feat. Roxy barely glanced at her.

Dr. Sevenson looked up from her papers and sat back. “Please,” she said, nodding at the chairs in front of her desk.

We sat.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” she told me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It takes great strength to continue doing what would certainly have made your parents proud, but I’m sure you will continue to do so. At least, I hope so.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“What can I do for you?” she asked Roxy.

“I’m Roxanne Wilcox. I will be Emmie’s guardian. I was told I had to inform the school of our situation and leave contact information. I was also told that we had to see you personally, so I made this appointment.”