Little Fires Everywhere (34 page)

Forty-five minutes later—there had been traffic—the cab pulled up in front of the little house on Winslow. Mia was still home, trying to finish a piece she'd been working on, and she took one look at Bebe and understood what had happened. She would get the details later—some from Bebe herself, when she'd calmed down; others from the news stories that would air that night and the newspaper articles that would print the next morning. Full custody to the state, with a recommendation that the adoption by the McCulloughs be expedited. Termination of visitation rights. A court order prohibiting further contact between Bebe and her daughter
without the McCulloughs' unlikely consent. For now, she simply folded Bebe in her arms and took her into the kitchen, set a cup of hot tea before her, and let her cry.

The news was just beginning to spread at the high school as the last bell rang. Monique Lim got a page from her father, Sara Hendricks—whose father worked at Channel 5—got another from hers, and word traveled from there. Izzy, however, knew nothing of this until she arrived at Mia's after school, let herself in through the unlocked side door as usual, and came upstairs to see Bebe crumpled at the kitchen table.

“What happened?” she whispered, though she already knew. She had never seen an adult cry like that, with such an animal sound. Recklessly. As if there were nothing more to be lost. For years afterward, she would sometimes wake in the night, heart thumping, thinking she'd heard that agonized cry again.

Mia jumped up and shepherded Izzy back out onto the stairs, shutting the kitchen door behind her. “Is she—dying?” Izzy whispered. It was a ridiculous question, but in that moment she was honestly terrified this might be true. If a soul could leave a body, she thought, this is the sound it would make: like the screech of a nail being pulled from old wood. Instinctively, she huddled against Mia and buried her face against her.

“She's not dying,” Mia said. She put her arms around Izzy and held her close.

“But is she going to be okay?”

“She's going to survive, if that's what you mean.” Mia stroked Izzy's hair, which billowed out from beneath her fingers like plumes of smoke. It was like Pearl's, like her own had been as a little girl: the more you tried to smooth it, the more it insisted on springing free. “She's going to get through this. Because she has to.”

“But how?” Izzy could not believe that someone could endure this kind of pain and survive.

“I don't know, honestly. But she will. Sometimes, just when you think everything's gone, you find a way.” Mia racked her mind for an explanation. “Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago, when we were in Nebraska. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow.” She held Izzy at arm's length, wiped her cheek with a fingertip, smoothed her hair one last time. “People are like that, too, you know. They start over. They find a way.”

Izzy nodded and turned to go, then turned back. “Tell her I'm so sorry,” she said.

Mia nodded. “See you tomorrow, okay?”

Lexie and Moody, meanwhile, came home to a message on the answering machine telling them the case was over.
Order
some pizza,
their mother's staticky voice said.
There's cash in
the drawer under the phone book. I'll be home after
I file my piece. Dad won't be home until late—he's
tying up paperwork after the hearing.
Did Pearl know yet, Moody wondered, but they'd barely spoken since their falling out, and he retreated to his room and did his best not to wonder what Pearl was doing. As he'd guessed, Pearl was out with Trip that afternoon, and learned the news only when she came home some hours later to find Bebe—quiet now—still at the kitchen table.

“It's over,” Mia told her quietly, and that was all that needed to be said.

“I'm really sorry, Bebe,” Pearl said. “I'm—I'm so sorry.” Bebe didn't even look up, and Pearl disappeared into her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Mia and Bebe sat in silence for some time, until it had grown quite dark and Bebe finally rose to go.

“She will always be your child,” Mia said to Bebe, taking her hand. “You will always be her mother. Nothing will ever change that.” She kissed Bebe on the cheek and let her go. Bebe said nothing, just as she had said nothing all this time, and Mia wondered if she should ask what she was thinking, if she should push her to stay, if Bebe would be all right. In her place, she thought, she'd rather not be forced to talk, and tact won out. Later she would realize that Bebe must have heard this differently. That she must have heard, in these words, a permission granted. She would wonder if Bebe might have told her what she was planning if she'd pushed harder, and whether she would have tried to stop Bebe, or if she'd have helped, if she'd known. Even years later, she would never be able to answer this question to her own satisfaction.

The press conference ran longer than expected—nearly every news outfit had questions for the McCulloughs, and the McCulloughs, dazzled by their good fortune, stayed to answer them all. Were they relieved to have the ordeal over? Yes, of course they were. What were their plans for the next few days? They would take some time to themselves, now that Mirabelle was home to stay. They were looking forward to their life together as a family. What were they going to make for Mirabelle's first meal back home? Mrs. McCullough answered: macaroni and cheese, her favorite. When would the adoption process be finalized? Very soon, they hoped.

A reporter from Channel 19, at the back of the crowd, raised her hand. Did they feel any sympathy for Bebe Chow, who would never get to see her daughter again?

Mrs. McCullough stiffened. “Let's remember,” she said sharply, “that Bebe Chow wasn't able to care for Mirabelle, that she abandoned her, that she walked away from her responsibilities as a mother. Of course it saddens me that anyone would have to go through such a thing. But the important thing to remember is that the court decided Mark and I are the most appropriate parents for Mirabelle, and that now Mirabelle will have a stable, permanent home. I think that speaks volumes, don't you?”

By the time the conference had wound down, and the McCulloughs had taken Mirabelle home for good, it was almost five thirty. Mrs. Richardson, due to her husband's involvement in the case, could not write the
Sun Press
's story on the decision, so Sam Levi had been assigned the story instead. In his place, Mrs. Richardson was to cover Sam's usual beat—city politics. It was nearly nine o'clock when Mrs. Richardson finally filed her stories and arrived home. Her children had scattered to their own devices. Lexie's and Trip's cars were gone, and on the counter Mrs. Richardson found a note:
Mom, went to Serena's, back ~11 L.
No note from Trip, but that was typical: Trip never remembered to leave notes. Ordinarily this was a source of annoyance, but this time Mrs. Richardson found herself relieved: with so many people in the Richardson house, there was usually an audience, and tonight she did not want an audience.

Upstairs, she found Izzy's door shut, music wailing from inside. She had gone upstairs even before the pizza had arrived and had been in her room since, thinking about Bebe, how utterly shattered she had seemed. Part of her wanted to scream, so she slid a Tori Amos CD into the player, turned up the volume, and let it do the screaming for her. And part of her had wanted to cry—though she never cried, hadn't cried in years. She lay in the center of her bed and dug her fingernails into her palms so hard they left a row of half-moons, to keep tears from falling. By the time her mother came past her doorway and down the hall, toward Moody's room,
she had listened to the album four times and was just beginning on the fifth.

On an ordinary day, Mrs. Richardson would have opened the door, told Izzy to turn the volume down, made some disparaging comments about how depressing and angry Izzy's music always seemed to be. Today, however, she had more important things on her mind. Instead, she went down the hallway to Moody's room and rapped on the door.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

Moody was sprawled on his bed, guitar beside him, scribbling in a notebook. “What,” he said without looking up. He didn't bother to sit up as his mother entered, which irritated her further. She shut the door and marched to the bed and yanked the notebook out of his hands.

“You look at me when I'm talking to you,” she said. “I found out, you know. Did you think I wouldn't?”

Moody stared. “Found out what?”

“Did you think I was blind? Did you think I wouldn't even notice?” Mrs. Richardson slammed the notebook shut. “The two of you sneaking around all the time. I'm not stupid, Moody. Of course I knew what you were up to. I just thought you'd be a little more responsible.”

In Izzy's room, the music clicked off, but neither Moody nor his mother noticed.

Moody slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position. “
What
are you talking about?”

“I know,” Mrs. Richardson said. “About Pearl. About the baby.” The shock on Moody's face, his stunned silence, told her everything. He hadn't known, she realized. “She didn't tell you?” Moody's gaze had unfocused slowly from her face, like a boat adrift. “She didn't tell you,” Mrs. Richardson said, sinking down on the bed beside him. “Pearl had an abortion.” She felt a pang of guilt. Would things have been different, she
wondered, if he had known? When Moody still said nothing, Mrs. Richardson leaned over to take his hand. “I thought you knew,” she said. “I assumed you'd talked it over and decided to end it.”

Moody slowly, coldly, pulled his hand away. “I think you have the wrong son,” he said. It was Mrs. Richardson's turn to be taken aback. “There's nothing between Pearl and me. It wasn't mine.” He laughed, a tight, bitter cough. “Why don't you go ask Trip? He's the one screwing her.”

With one hand he took the notebook from his mother's lap and opened it again, focusing on his own handwriting on the page to keep tears from escaping. It was true for him now, in a way it hadn't been before. She had been with Trip, he had made love to her and she had let him and this had happened. Mrs. Richardson, however, didn't notice. She rose, in a daze, and headed down the hall to her own room to think things over. Trip? she thought. Could that be? Neither she nor Moody was aware of the sudden quiet from Izzy's room, that Izzy's door was now open a crack, that Izzy, too, was sitting in stunned silence, absorbing what she'd heard.

Mrs. Richardson went to work early on Friday morning, leaving a half hour early to avoid facing any of her children. The night before, Lexie had come home close to midnight, Trip even later, and though normally she'd have scolded them for being out late on a school night, she had instead stayed in her room, ignoring their attempts to be stealthy on the stairs. She was trying to make sense of it all. Due to the extra stress she had allowed herself a second glass of wine, which had gone warm. Trip and Pearl? She understood, of course, why Pearl would fall for Trip—girls generally did—but what Trip might see in Pearl was another matter. She fell asleep puzzling over it, and woke no more illuminated. He was not,
she reflected as she backed out of the garage, the kind of boy who usually fell for serious, intellectual girls like Pearl. She could admit this, even as his mother, even as she adored him. He had always been about surface, her beautiful, sunny, shallow boy, and on the surface she couldn't see what would draw him to Pearl. So did Pearl have hidden depths, or did Trip? This thought preoccupied her all the way into her office.