Stealing Heaven (9 page)

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***

The house is exactly like it is in the pamphlet Mom and I have
gone through, and I see rooms I know, rooms that I've studied. I see silver
laid out in the open, resting on what looks like a dining room table.

I don't go near it. I don't want to. Instead I walk outside with
Allison, head across a perfect lawn. I should be guessing how long it is,
looking for security lights, for motion sensors. Instead I talk to her about
Brad and suntans and shoes.

Her family is nice. Her mother and father are distracted but
polite, shake my hand and offer me something to drink, ask about school. I tell
them the story I told Allison the day we met and then realize James has arrived
and that he and Allison are talking. Arguing, actually.

"I don't need you deciding things for me," Allison says,
her voice rising. "I'm eighteen. I can--and I know this is a shock for
you--make up my own mind, James."

"Do we really have to talk about this now, Ally?"

"No, because you're going to mind your own business and let
me lead my own life." She turns to

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me. "I mean, that's not too much to ask for, right,
Sydney?"

"Absolutely," I say, and she grins at me.

"I'm just trying to look out for you," James says.

"Are you?" Allison says, voice suddenly sharp. "I
would think you'd be too busy looking out for yourself."

"Allison, James, keep your voices down, please," their
mother says. "In fact, both of you come with me--your father is attempting
to light the grill and we all know what that means."

Both James and Allison laugh, the tension between them broken.
"Come on," Allison says. "James and I will have to save him from
himself and possibly run and get the fire extinguisher."

"I'll be right there," I say, and watch them go. I can
have tonight, just a few hours I'll keep to myself. I'll be careful. I won't
forget why I am really here. There is silver in this house and I saw it. I know
I will see it again. Silver is the story of my life.

It is how Mom and I ended up here.

When I was little Mom did stuff she wouldn't touch now. She and
Dad stole jewels, paintings, credit

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cards, basically anything they could get their hands on. But then
Dad got arrested and Mom got worried. They'd never gotten married but I was around,
proof of a connection between them.

I suppose I shouldn't say she was worried. Mom was angry. When I
think back to what I remember most clearly about her then it's that she was
always in motion--pacing around whatever apartment we were living in, tossing
our things into paper bags and telling me to get in the car. We. were
constantly on the move and had nothing to show for it. I remember a series of
uniforms--waitress, I guess, Mom going back to what she'd once known--and food
brought home in grease-stained bags.

"This isn't living," she said one night as I was eating
and she was pacing around the room. "I've got nothing now. Nothing. I
need--"

I swallowed and watched her turn toward me, eyes shining.

We moved again and the uniforms stopped. Mom was home now, all the
time, and one night we went for a drive, stopped, and walked to a large house.
We stood in the shadows and waited for a long while. "Not a sound,
baby," Mom whispered, and her

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fingers slid over my ear in a way I knew like breathing. I waited--and
worried--but Mom came back and the next day I had new clothes and a new doll
and Mom was happy.

Getting into silver was an accident. One night she went inside a
house and paused before going upstairs to where a safe with jewels was supposed
to be. I saw her through the window I was waiting by, watched her walk into a
dining room and open a cabinet. Crammed inside were boxes full of silver forks
and knives and spoons. There were other things too: teapots, candlesticks,
serving trays. Mom took it all.

She let me look at it later, happiness lighting up her face as she
did, and for once we didn't leave right away. We stayed and she checked the
papers every day. It took a week and an overzealous housekeeper looking for
something to do before anyone noticed the silver was gone. It got a paragraph
in the paper and nothing more, didn't even make it onto the front page. Silver
gone, burglary suspected, insurance claim filed. End of story.

"Silver," Mom told me, said the word like it was magic,
and ever since it's ruled her. Ruled us. It's easy enough to find if you know
where to look, and

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it's not high-profile enough to attract a lot of public attention.
And anything that isn't high-profile is always easier to fence.

Because of silver I can pry the molding off a window without
making a sound. I know how to test for plate even though I don't usually need
to. I can drive a car, climb into a house, deal with growling dogs. I know
exactly how much your average nineteenth-century tea service weighs--in troy ounces,
even--and how many pieces it has.

For silver I learned to read, write, work numbers. For silver I
learned the names of every plantation from Virginia to Florida. I can tell you
which ones we've visited, which ones we want to, which ones we never will. I
can tell you how to find someone's house no matter where it is. I can tell you
what to do if there is silver inside.

The story of my life can be told in silver: in chocolate mills,
serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do
with me. The story of my life is things. Things that aren't mine, that won't
ever be mine. It's all I've ever known.

I wish it wasn't.

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I can't stay here. I want to, want to eat hamburgers and talk
about the beach. I want to help Allison plan ways to see Brad again. I want to
be just like everyone else, but I can't because I'm not. I won't ever be.

I walk back to the house. Allison catches up to me as I'm heading
for the door.

"Are you sneaking out?" She laughs. "I promise,
despite the production with the grill--you really should have seen it--dinner
will be edible. Daddy's just allowed to light it. Our cook wouldn't actually
let him cook anything."

"I'm not feeling very well." I feel bad for her, for how
she's standing there so trusting, so ... so secure in what she knows, so sure
of what she sees. I envy her. I wish I could feel that way, have that kind of
life.

"Oh no," Allison says. "Do you need anything? Do
you want me to drive you home? Let me just grab my keys and -- "

I shake my head. "Tell everyone I said good-bye, okay?"
My voice is so level, so polite.

"Okay," Allison says, puzzled-sounding. She calls out,
"Bye, Sydney!" as I'm heading down the driveway. I don't turn around.
It's not me she's calling. It's

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just a name, a name belonging to someone she thinks she knows.
Someone who doesn't really exist.

Mom isn't back when I get home. I cry in the shower anyway, habit.
Mom doesn't like it when I cry. When I was a kid she'd look at me, bewildered
and then impatient if I didn't stop. Older, and she'd ask me why I was crying,
listen to me sob out an explanation, and then say, "But baby, what does
crying do? What does it change?"

"I cried over your father," she told me two days after
I'd woken up from having sex with Roger and heard him and Mom out in the hall.
I hadn't spoken to her since I'd said "Stop," and when I looked over
at her she'd looked nervous. Unsure.

I'd always known I was a planet orbiting her bright star and that
I was lucky she wanted me with her, that she'd kept me by her side. I'd always
thought of her in terms of how much I loved her. I'd always been afraid that
maybe she didn't love me.

But she did. She does. I saw that then. And so I said,
"Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "I really ... I loved him. He was
my world and then he was gone and--" Her voice

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cracked a little and she cleared her throat. "But you know
what? No one is everything, baby. Promise me you'll remember that. I don't
want--" She reached out, ran a hand down my hair. "I don't want that
for you, you understand me? I want you to always remember what you can believe
in, remember that it's what--"

"What you can hold in your hands," I said, and watched
her nod. When she did, I realized I hadn't cried over Roger. I realized I
wasn't going to. I realized Mom had done what she did because she thought she
was protecting me. She'd seen what I felt for Roger and saw what I couldn't,
saw him for the jerk he was and tried as best she could, in the ways she knew
how, to let me see it too and make sure I ended up in one piece. She didn't
want me to be where she'd been, in the place where you cried and meant it.

What she'd done was awful, but she hadn't done it to hurt me. I'd
hurt myself and she'd let me see that I could, showed me that I always had to
be careful. And I have been since then. I have been careful, so careful. Too
careful, I know Mom thinks, but she's wrong.

I haven't been careful enough because I stand in

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the shower and cry for what I've never had and never will. A real
home. Things I can truly call my own and keep forever. Friends. I am in the
place where you cry and mean it.

It sucks.

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13

Mom gets back late, very late, and she isn't alone. I hear
footsteps crossing through the house with hers.

"I don't usually do this," Mom says, a giddy note in her
voice that, if I didn't know better, I would think is real. She starts to say
something else but then coughs. I wish she'd just go to the doctor already.
I'll get her some cough syrup tomorrow. Maybe that will help.

Whoever she's with mumbles something in reply, voice low and
drunken-sounding, "... sure your roommate isn't home?"

Roommate? Must be someone recently divorced and gun-shy about
being with someone who has kids, even one who is eighteen. I'll have to
remember, if he's still around in the morning, to call Mom--damn,

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what's her name again? Miranda, that's it. Miranda.

"No, no, she isn't," Mom says. "It's just you and
me, Harold."

Harold. Of course. He mumbles something else and Mom laughs the
way she does when someone says something she's heard a million times before but
is acting like it's the first time.

"I can't thank you enough for everything you've done for
me," she says. "You're...perfect. You're so perfect."

I roll my eyes. How could anyone fall for that?

Harold does, apparently, because he laughs, pleased-sounding, and
then there are other noises. I pull my pillow over my head.

When I get up the next morning Mom is downstairs fiddling with the
coffeemaker and Harold is gone.

"Hey, Miranda," I say anyway. "I just wanted to let
you know my half of the rent is going to be real late this month. That's not a
problem, right?"

"Funny," she says, and grins at me. "His third
divorce was finalized a month ago. You would not believe what I had to do to
get that man to take me to dinner."

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"I can imagine," I say, and launch into an imitation of
her voice last night. '"You're...perfect. You're so perfect.'"

"I know, I know. But people hear and see what they want to,
baby. You know that. And did you hear him afterward? I had to--"

"Mom, please. I heard more than enough last night."

She rolls her eyes and then makes a face at the coffeemaker.
"Baby, I can't get this to work. Will you fix me a cup of coffee?
Please?"

I nod.

"I got us a house," she says, grinning. "We can
move in this afternoon. And then," she says, getting up and coming over to
me, sliding one arm around my shoulders, "things will finally start to
happen."

I finish putting water in the coffeemaker and turn it on.

"Isn't that good?" she says, squeezing my arm gently,
and I look at her. She's watching me intently. I force a smile.

"It's great. You want me to make you some toast or
something?"

***

119

We're settled into the new house by midafternoon. It's past the
public beach and the small houses that dot it, lies at the end of a dirt road
by an inlet.

I love the house. From the moment we see it, I love it. It's small
and low to the ground, brown wood and stone surrounded by rocks and trees. It's
two stories and only five rooms, a living room and kitchen/dining room on the
first floor, two bedrooms and a bath on the second. It's nothing special, but
you can tell people live here. Mom doesn't like that at all, grimaces over the knickknacks
the owners have left behind, framed pictures of boats and dogs and yellowing
images that must be deceased relatives. She says the furniture, just about all
of which is made of the same dark wood as the house, is "a disaster."

"Who thinks something like this"--she points at a chair,
rough-hewn and angled to look out a bank of windows in the living
room--"needs a pillow covered with tiny blue flowers? I'm afraid to even
look in the bedrooms."