Rules for Stealing Stars (18 page)

Thirty-Two

I
t's hard to sleep tonight, with Marla trapped in the closet.

I keep thinking I hear her rustling around in there. I keep thinking that we could try some other way to get inside. I've seen criminals use clothes hangers and credit cards to magically unlock all kinds of doors and dead bolts and vaults on TV. So surely we can open a closet door with some combination of household objects.

We didn't do enough, that much I'm sure of.

Dad opens jars with butter sometimes. He'll try a tight lid for a few minutes, elbow bent, mouth all crooked with effort, and then he'll grab a stick of butter and push it into the cracks to loosen it up.

“We should use butter on the door,” I say. I am sharing a bed with Astrid, whose legs are splayed like a starfish. Her foot is digging into my shin, and I am huddled into approximately one-sixth of her bed.

“Mmmm,” Astrid says. I don't know how she sleeps at a time like this. Eleanor is not sleeping, so she's the one who hears me.

“Butter, Silly?” she says. She has a night-light on next to her bed.

“Maybe the door is stuck like a jar gets stuck,” I say.

“It's not like a jar,” Eleanor says. “It's not a normal thing. It's not some solvable thing. We can't fix it.”

I get up to try again and Astrid wakes up with a groan.

“Please stop doing that,” Eleanor says while I rattle the doorknob. I can't hear Marla anymore. There's no snoring. No shuffling. No rustling.

“It might change,” I say, because it has to be true. “It has to open eventually. Marla will miss us. She'll want to come back.”

“The closet in the sewing room. That's probably where Laurel's stuck. That's why Mom doesn't want us trying to go in. That's why it's always locked and Mom's always in there drinking,” Astrid says. For once my sisters reached the same conclusions as me, and now they are saying the worst things in the world, the most unimaginable realities.

In a few hours Dad will wake up, and eventually he will not believe us when we say Marla is at a friend's house. Because eventually he will remember that Marla doesn't really have any friends.

Or he won't remember her at all, I think. I'd almost forgotten what Astrid said before, about the time Eleanor stayed too long in the closet and she started to fade from memory. We have to get Marla out before that happens. Something like a ticking time bomb sets off in my chest, and I whir into panic.

“Maybe we need to tell Mom,” Eleanor says. “Maybe she knows how to get Marla out.”

“Mom's the reason this is happening,” Astrid says, and I've never heard her sound so bitter and mad. I never would have guessed Astrid would be the one to get so angry at Mom. All of Astrid's disappearing into different rooms and humming little tunes to herself during fights and losing herself in dioramas and paintings and her own imagination seemed sweet and Astrid-ish. But I guess she was storing up all this rocky feeling.

“If Mom knew what to do, she'd get her sister out. I don't think Mom even remembers,” I say.

“That's probably where she preferred to stay,” Astrid says. Something's been set off in her, and she's practically a brand-new person. “Mom was probably mean to her too.
Maybe I'll stay inside my own closet, and there will someday be a whole house of locked closets with little girls stuck inside, trying to avoid Mom.”

Angry Astrid is awful.

“Maybe we should tell Dad; he's the one who's here,” I say.

“Do you really think Dad could handle it?” Astrid says. “He's barely holding it together now. And Mom's doing well in Arizona. What if we told her and she got sicker? No. Marla's coming out. I'm positive. I know Marla. She'll come out and we don't have to worry Dad and things won't keep getting worse.” Astrid's eyes fill with tears. She believes what she's saying, I think, but only barely.

“We have to do something,” I say.

“Have Mom and Dad ever really helped make anything better?” Astrid says. “We're stronger without them right now.” Her voice falls apart on the last sentence. Falters on the awful trueness of it. “We can do this. Marla will come out. We're sisters. She wouldn't leave us.”

“What if Marla never wants to come back to all this?” I say. I'm gesturing to everything—to the room, to us, to Mom not being here and Dad not knowing what to do. I gesture to the fact that we have a ceiling fan instead of an air conditioner and that we moved to New Hampshire for a mom who's not here anyway. To the way even pancakes
seem sad lately. Of course Marla chose a closet full of magic over us.

I wouldn't mind returning the star to the closet, I think, and staying there with it. The star and the closet are the only things that help.

I tell my mind to stop thinking those thoughts. We can't give up.

“There's one more thing we can try,” I say.

Thirty-Three

T
he three of us end up in Marla's room in the middle of the night, in a straight line, looking at the closet door.

“Marla's closet doesn't work, Silly,” Eleanor says. She is trying to sound nice but mostly sounds like she needs about a week to herself and a pile of chocolate-chip pancakes.

I open the closet door. It's pointless to argue when we can go inside and see for ourselves.

“This is the memory closet,” I say. Astrid's shaking a little, because she knows I wouldn't bring them here for no reason.

I close the door behind us and the closet shifts immediately this time, like it knows how dire the circumstances
are, how desperately I need it to come through for me. We are transported directly to the palace. Chandeliers. Marble floors. Violins.

“Oh,” Astrid says. “Oh wow.” Her eyes are so big they take up her whole face, pretty much. Eleanor sweats next to her. Her fingers tremble.

“But this closet doesn't work,” Eleanor says, not able to give it up.

“Marla got it to work. Wait. Wait for it. This isn't the big thing,” I say. Which sounds ridiculous, because of course this is a huge thing. It is a strange, strange day when a closet turning into a palace is not the strangest thing happening.

I don't know why we are suddenly allowed to see Mom's memories, but we are. I guess because we need to.

Maybe I don't hate the New Hampshire house so much anymore. Maybe the New Hampshire house wants to help.

“Oh!” Astrid says. The princesses are entering the room, right on time. Girl after girl. I brace myself for Mom's grand entrance, and I gasp at the right moment, along with Astrid and Eleanor, loving the swish of her gown and the easiness of her smile and the way she is both familiar and a total stranger.

“That's. Oh my God. That's . . . ,” Astrid says. She doesn't even try to finish the sentence.

“Did you make this, Silly?” Eleanor says. She is filled with wonder. She is asking me for information. She isn't
mad or disappearing or telling me I'm ridiculous.

I try to sound as in control as she seems to think I am. I lower my voice and try to keep it calm. “I told you, it's the memory closet. It shows you the memories you need to see.” I take my eyes off Mom for one-half second and point Laurel out to my sisters.

Laurel's looking at Mom's arms. Looking at her wrists.

Not at the bracelets, which sparkle and slide around her wrist for being too loose. Laurel is looking at what's underneath the bracelets. The way I've been looking at Marla's wrists, looking for shadows and shades of strange colors—reds and purples and yellows.

Everything about Mom's wrists looks like Marla's—how small they are. The way she touches them every so often with the fingers of her other hand.

And there they are, just like Marla's, as I knew they would be, even if I didn't actually know anything at all. Bruises. A row of them, purple and yellow and red, circling her wrists like the bracelets, but ugly. So, so ugly and painful and tender, and trying hard to be hidden but not.

Eleanor said that maybe Marla reminded Mom of herself as a kid. I didn't know what that meant, but maybe I do now.

I swallow a small sound of pain, understanding too much, too fast.

I let Astrid and Eleanor watch the rest of the ball. I smile when they gasp at Dad's handsomeness, and I shift and fidget right along with them when Mom and Dad dance so closely and look at each other with so much love that it sort of feels like we shouldn't be there at all.

“She's beautiful,” Astrid says as Dad drops her into a dip. Mom throws her head back. Her hair nearly touches the floor.

“She's always been beautiful,” Eleanor says. Her arms are crossed over her chest, like that might stop her from really seeing all of this. I get it.

“She was the other kind of beautiful before,” Astrid says. “Now she's beautiful in a way that makes me sad. But here she's a different kind of beautiful. Lasting. Happy-making. Like how a painting is beautiful because you know it will be the same every day. Like, the great works of art or whatever. Those ballerina paintings. And Monet, with the lily pads. Isn't she lily-pad beautiful now?”

Astrid may be spacey, but she's so much smarter than the rest of us, it's crazy. I guess I forget that sometimes. I nod like I understand, but I don't really, and not only because I can't quite picture Monet or lily pads, but also because I can't think of Mom as anything but the sad kind of beautiful.

Just scary. Or scared. Maybe I'm not totally sure which.

“But look at her wrists,” I say. I am getting tired of the sound of the violins and the pattering of feet and the sweetness in the air that says dessert and wine are coming. I'm ready to go home and save our sister.

“She's hurt,” Eleanor says.

“She's hurt like Marla,” I say. We've never talked about Marla's bruises. We never talked about that day that I hid in my closet and I heard yelps and Mom apologizing and saw Marla hiding her wrists.

“Like Marla?” Astrid looks at me full-on, for the first time since we entered this closet.

“You know,” I say, because I have to believe she does. This cannot be another secret that I kept. This cannot be another way that I let down my sisters.

Astrid shakes her head. Eleanor raises her eyebrows.

“Marla. Has bruises on her wrists. I mean, they're probably gone by now. But they were there. From before Mom left. From when she was mad. I mean, it was an accident, like when Mom found out about Henry, and she sort of, you know, pushed you a little.”

“What are you saying, Silly?” Eleanor says. “That Mom hurt Marla?”

I spin.

At first I think it's just my brain spinning. But then I
realize it is all of me: my heart, my muscles twisting themselves up, my stomach, my senses. Everything dizzying itself up.

They didn't know.

“You saw Mom get mad at me about Henry?” Astrid says. Her eyes are shiny, and I don't know if they are sad or a little happy. I don't know anything.

It was all on me, it was my responsibility and I messed it up.

And if Mom is any indication, those bruises never go away. They always matter.

“I thought it was one of those things we knew but didn't say out loud,” I say. They don't look mad, my sisters. They look sad.

“We need to get out of this closet,” Eleanor says.

“Wait, I have to look at another memory,” I say. It's time to know how Laurel died. Or if she died. How she got stuck in the closet. Why Mom feels so helpless and angry and gets so drunk. I can't look away anymore.

Thirty-Four

I
can't stop thinking about this one day. It was back when the New Hampshire house was a summer house and not an all-the-time house. Maybe a year ago. Maybe more. It's getting hard to remember, because I used to mark time by Mom's trips Away, but they started happening so often that I lost track. So I started sort of losing track of time in general.

Mom had been sick a lot. I was downstairs. It was the first time I heard her feet pad back and forth across the floor a million times a day. I pictured her like a ghost wandering from room to room, looking for answers to some question that she maybe hadn't even managed to ask. I couldn't decide whether to go check on her. I wasn't sure what I would say, if
I did check on her, or what exactly I would be checking for.

I eventually snuck upstairs, very carefully, because sometimes loud noises or unexpected noises or really all noises upset Mom.

It turned out Mom was at the top of the stairs, and she was crying. She had a mug next to her, and I remember thinking it smelled too sweet to be coffee and too intense to be juice. It smelled like a steak dinner, but without the steak. I didn't like it.

“Wanna watch TV?” I said, like she wasn't crying, or at least like this wasn't weird.

I guess it wasn't that weird. I'd seen Mom cry before. I'd kind of seen Mom cry a lot.

“I forgot to do something,” Mom said. She looked confused and tired. I wanted to go back downstairs so I wouldn't have to look at her anymore. Looking at her was giving me a feeling in my stomach. Weight mixed with sickness. My ribs felt full up but my head emptied out. I was pretty sure I would feel okay again if I could get away from her.

“What'd you forget to do?” I asked. “I'll do it for you. Groceries? Laundry?”

“I do more than
chores
,” she spat. It was unexpected, the sudden rise of anger, the way her voice sounded more like breaking glass than anything else. “I'm not just a
mother
. I'm not just a
housewife
. I have other things to do, you know. I
know you think all I know how to do is shop and make the beds and fix dinner, but I'm a
person
. A whole person. Not that any of you care.”

I couldn't breathe. I thought I'd walk down the street for her and pick up milk, or put together Kraft macaroni and cheese for my sisters so they'd have something on the table when they got home. I thought she would be happy if I vacuumed my room or the hallway or something. I don't know. I guess I thought I could fix something small and it would maybe help fix something big.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. I could barely get the words out. And as soon as I'd apologized, I wanted to take it back. I wanted to tell her she was mean and unfair and all kinds of other things.

She kept on crying.

“I can't believe I forgot,” she said. She maybe said it a few times. I was mostly looking at a spot on the carpeted stairs.

But I wonder, now, if she was remembering her sister. Remembering the closets, and remembering that she forgot about the closets. Realizing she didn't know where her sister was, and that she hadn't told her daughters anything about her. Remembering she hadn't saved her.

I don't know, but I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to forget. I was going to get Marla out.