Secrets of Eden (37 page)

MY MOM IN
black jeans? That was never going to embarrass me.

The stuff everyone found in my bedroom that awful Monday in July when they went there to get me some clothes and stuff so I didn’t have to go back inside the house? Now,
that
was embarrassing. There in the chaos on my bed and on the floor were, like, a whole zoo full of stuffed animals. There was Bunny Jo and Elmo and Scraggles the Bear. There was Eeyore, for crying out loud. There were three American Girl dolls. Obviously I don’t play with American Girl dolls, and I haven’t since I was, like, nine. But I was never able to bring myself to put them in boxes and cart them up to the attic. Once Mom offered to do it for me, and another time she even offered to sell them for me on eBay if I wanted. But I just couldn’t see Samantha and Addy and
Kirsten getting all moldy in the attic or being sold to some other family. And so they were right there in my bedroom when Stephen and Ginny and everyone else just popped in and started touching my underwear and my bras and my makeup. Yup, they saw the trolls and the rub-on tattoos in one of my drawers and my thongs and boy shorts in another. Not too weird for them. Not too awkward for me. And yes, it did feel like a violation of sorts. On Sunday it hadn’t crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be back in my house the next day.

They also saw the jewelry Mom had given me on Friday. A pair of earrings that were rubies and diamonds and her own grandmother’s pearl necklace. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean, I guess I was touched. It was clearly supposed to be one of those mom-and-daughter bonding moments. On Monday, if she hadn’t died, we were going to put the jewelry in the safe-deposit box at her bank, because the stuff sure as heck didn’t belong in my jewelry box with my ten-dollar hoops.

Of course, the grown-ups didn’t bring me half the stuff from my room that I really wanted. They did fine in the needs department: They brought me, like, every pair of blue jeans and shorts I owned and about seventeen pairs of underwear. They found my retainer. (Oh, joy.) They filled a shoe box with CDs (most of which I had already cherry-picked for my iPod). It was the wants department where things were a little lacking. Shirts? None of my favorites. And way more long-sleeved shirts than I needed in July and not nearly enough T-shirts. And two sweaters I never wore (and wasn’t about to wear in July or August). And none of the DVDs of my favorite shows I would watch in the summer on my laptop before going to sleep. And only about half of the things I used to keep my skin clear, as well as the totally wrong foundation.

But Tina was amazing. So were Ginny and Tina’s mom, Carole. Tina shared everything she owned with me (and I mean everything),
and Ginny or Carole seemed to make things magically appear all the time. It was like they could read my mind. I’m sure Tina was telling them the things I needed, but still: It was totally amazing. Ginny wanted to be a superhero and solve all my problems. I think she was okay that I chose to live with my friend, Tina, but I could also tell she was a little disappointed that I didn’t move in with her family. (Sometimes Tina thought Ginny was kind of mental those months, but I reminded her that the woman had just lost her best friend.)

Still, it was incredibly nice of the Cousinos to take me
and
Lula in. I mean, they didn’t have to take the dog. But they did. Lula and I weren’t super close, but we became a lot closer after Mom and Dad were gone. She seemed to need me a lot more, and I guess I needed her. In the old days (and that was how I came to describe in my mind my life before that Sunday night), she had slept in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Now she slept with me in Tina’s and my bedroom.

At first I felt really guilty that Tina no longer had her room to herself. But she said I shouldn’t worry about it. I should view it like we were in college or boarding school and we were roommates. Tina’s father was an engineer, but his hobby was woodworking, and in his basement he had a workshop that was pretty serious-looking. In August he completely redid Tina’s closet, putting in all these shelves and dividers, and he built this nook with yet more shelves above her bureau. He moved out her night table and replaced her dresser with a much thinner one, and then he brought in my bed and my mattress from the old house and managed to make everything fit in the bedroom. It was cramped but not unpleasant. We both learned to fall asleep with someone else in the room. At first her younger brother and sister—Eddie was in third grade, and Emily was just starting middle school—treated me like I was dying of some terrible disease that might be contagious: They were very nice to me, but they kept their distance. They said as little as possible to me. It wasn’t until a few days
before Halloween, when I helped them figure out their Halloween costumes and showed Emily that she could make the mermaid thing work if she wore wheelies instead of regular sneakers (that’s how they made the fish swim when they brought
The Little Mermaid
to Broadway), that they began to view me as someone who was going to be a part of their lives for at least the next two years and, in some ways, maybe forever.

Did I feel like I was imposing on the family? Totally. I almost didn’t try out for the school play because it would mean weird hours and extra driving time for them, but they insisted I go for it. So I did. I tried to do as much as I could to help around the house, which in all fairness was the exact opposite of what my approach to chores had been when I’d been living at home. I think my new habit of, like, loading my plates in the dishwasher and making my bed in the morning drove Tina crazy sometimes. She would kid me that I was making her look bad, but I knew there was some truth behind the joke.

But Tina also knew since the sixth grade what had gone on in my house. I think that was when I started telling her about what a total cretin my dad was and what a jerk he was to my mom. I think she was very glad I was out of that house.

And here is one more strange thing: I’m sure Tina’s parents fought. Tina told me they did. But I never once witnessed one. Not a single time. Just as I felt I needed to be on my best behavior around them, they thought they needed to be on their best behavior around me. I told Stephen this at one point in September, and he gave me a sheepish little grin and shrugged. He said
it was one good thing to come out of that awful Sunday night: We were all striving to be better people. To be kind. To be gentler with one another.

IT WAS ACTUALLY
Tina’s idea I get the tattoo. And she got one, too, though it’s so close to her hip bone that no one sees it except her boyfriend. It’s also pretty small. Hers is this fantasy animal that’s part horse and part dragon. A little over a year ago, her horse died. It was this beautiful Appaloosa named Maggie. The vet had had to put her down. And since Tina would be leaving for college in a couple years and her younger brother and sister didn’t ride, the family didn’t get another horse. But Tina missed Maggie, and so when we decided to get the tats, it was natural she’d get this mystical-looking horse that was probably supposed to be immortal.

We went to the place in downtown Rutland where Josie, my social worker, had gotten most of hers. It really wasn’t a big deal. And mine hurt a lot less than Tina’s, even though it’s a lot bigger. The guy wasn’t nearly as creepy as I would have expected. He wasn’t my type, because he shaved his head and he had tattoos everywhere on his arms and neck (and who knows where else), but he was very nice. And he had great breath. He must have lived on peppermint gum.

The biggest difference between Tina’s and mine is that I wanted my tattoo where people could see it. I wanted to flaunt it. So I got mine on my shoulder. My left shoulder. August still had a couple days left, and I knew even in Vermont there was at least a month when I could wear shirts with spaghetti straps. Mine is a big, blooming pink rose, and I had the artist add a stem that ran a few inches down my back and a couple of green leaves. He combined two patterns.

I picked a flower because my mom loved roses. We even had some wild rosebushes at our house. The flowers really didn’t last all that long, but they were pretty. The petals were just starting to fall off when my mom died.

Anyway, my tattoo was sort of a test, I think. Just how much slack were people really cutting me? Answer? A ton. I could have gotten a tattoo of people doing it like dogs (they do have tattoos like that), and all
the adults in my life would have hugged me and told me it was very elegant or I had very good taste.

MY MOM’S FUNERAL
was completely different from Dad’s. My mom’s was packed. There were people overflowing into the choir loft and downstairs into the community room, where one of the trustees had set up a video feed. I’d had no idea how many people had cared about my mom or me—there were a ton of kids there, some of whom I thought viewed me as a total dork—and I was really touched. Dad’s funeral, which we held a few days later in Buffalo, was just me and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles on his side. Not even my cousins were there for some reason. It was so lightly attended that we used this dark chapel off the main sanctuary and still everything the minister said echoed like we were in a cave. It was very creepy. As I recall, the minister talked about forgiveness and understanding, but I think most of us there were just too ashamed to pay much attention. And we
were
ashamed—at least I was. I just couldn’t wait to get back to Vermont after that part of the nightmare. Anyway, Stephen and I talked a lot the three days after my parents died, and I’m pretty sure I was the first person in Haverill to know he was going to leave as soon as Mom’s service was behind him.

I must admit, there were times that spring and summer, after he and my mom had stopped seeing each other on the sly, when I was seriously pissed at him. At first I told people I didn’t know about their affair. But I did. Even now I’m not exactly sure who ended it. I mean, my mom never acknowledged to me that they’d even had one, and Stephen only did in a vague sort of way when I confronted him about it after my parents were dead. But I knew what had been going on. And I knew how happy my mom was with him. It was really easy to go into fantasy land, because Dad was living at the lake then and my mom
was happy. I could imagine my parents getting divorced and my mom and Stephen getting married and no one using her as a punching bag anymore. I didn’t think too hard about the specifics of Stephen Drew as my stepfather, because I was in tenth grade and way too old to get watery-eyed about a new family. By then I was counting the days until I could leave Haverill once and for all. But I wanted Mom to be happy. Still, I wasn’t surprised when I realized that Stephen was going to get out now, too. I knew right away he was going to feel the loss of my mom a lot more than he might have expected in those months between when they broke up and when my dad killed her.