Julia's Daughters (6 page)

“I . . . we need to talk,” I say, fussing with the towel.

“You're telling me.” Ben's not usually a cynical guy, but his words are dripping with sarcasm.

He turns around and grabs my white terry robe off a hook on the back of the door. He opens it for me. I hesitate, then turn my back to him and let the towel slide to the floor. I'm relieved to feel the robe around me. I tie it tightly before I face him.

“About Haley,” I say, not sure what he means.

He exhales. “Izzy told me.”

“Izzy told you what?” I walk out of the bathroom. I feel exposed. I need to get dressed. “What does Izzy know?”

“Izzy said you went out in the middle of the night and brought Haley home. Where the hell was she?” he asks, raising his voice.

I walk to my dresser. He stands near the bathroom door, watching me. I pull on panties and slip out of my robe, my back to him. I grab a sports bra and pull it over my head. I don't turn to face him until I'm wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt from some camp one of the girls attended.

He's just standing there, looking at me. Even heavier than he's ever been, he's still a good-looking man: short, dark hair, a day-old beard that's sexy on him rather than making him look unkempt. He's a big guy. Six foot two, stocky, though he's never been heavy, until now. I always had a thing for big guys.

“Where was she?” Ben asks, clearly ticked off. I can't tell if the anger is directed at me or Haley. Probably both of us.

“She was at someone's house. On Third.”

“In that neighborhood? At three o'clock in the morning? I thought she was grounded. Why the hell was she even out of the house?”

“My guess is that she went out her window again.” She'd done the same thing a couple of weeks ago and strolled back in the back door around noon the following day.

“And exactly why did she sneak out the window, then call you to come get her? Why didn't you wake me up?”

I want to say
I didn't wake you up because it's pretty obvious you're more interested in what fertilizer you're spreading on lawns this week than your family,
but I don't. I walk over to the bed and sit down. “She went to this house where there was sort of a party and I think things got out of hand.” I look up at him. “I'm just glad she had the sense to call me. That's good that she still feels like she can call us if she gets into trouble, right?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea what you're talking about. We're going to have to get into this later. I have to meet with a client. Are you coming to dinner tonight? Mom's birthday. She's expecting us all there.”

I close my eyes.

“I already told her the girls were coming. She needs a count. She's making beef bourguignonne.”

I don't want to go, of course, but I know I should. It's time for us to start acting like a family again. Haley and Izzy need that. I know they do. I just don't know if I can do it.

My eyes are still closed. “She's cooking for her own birthday? Why aren't we just going out?” Having to sit with his family and have dinner in a restaurant is torture enough. Being in that house, with them, just seems . . . impossible.

“You know Mom. She doesn't like to eat out. She likes to eat at home. It's her birthday, Julia.” His tone is now hostile. “If she wants to cook for us for her birthday, we can let her cook. It won't kill you to come.”

We're both silent for a moment and the silence almost hurts more than his stinging tone.

“It might be good for you,” he says more gently. “You know, to get out and do something normal?”

Tears immediately spring in my eyes. “What's normal now, Ben?”

“You know what I mean.” The anger is gone from his voice now. Now I hear his pain. “We have to find a way to move on. I know things can't be the same. Be the way they were before. But we have to think about Haley and Izzy. About what they need.”

He's right. I know he's right. “Fine. I'll come,” I say, opening my eyes. Right now I can't imagine going to Linda's for dinner, listening to Ben and his brothers laugh and talk and carry on the way they do. Theirs has always been a loud family, something I've never been quite comfortable with. I can't imagine going, I can't imagine putting a fork of Linda's beef bourguignonne into my mouth. I can't imagine making small talk with my sisters-in-law or Jeremy's new girlfriend. “I'll be there,” I say.

He walks to the bedroom door. “Six o'clock. I'll just meet you and the girls there. I've got work to do.”

I look up. “I thought we were going to talk about Haley.”

“I told you I have to meet a client.” He stands there for a minute. “You want me to go talk to her? To get to the bottom of this?”

You know what's at the bottom of this,
I want to holler. Your dead daughter is
at the bottom of this!
But I don't raise my voice. I don't say those things. Instead, I just say, “Go meet your client. I'll try to talk to Haley, but you and I need to sit down and discuss this, Ben. We need to have some kind of plan. And you need to talk to your mother. Obviously Haley shouldn't have stolen Percocet from her, but where is she keeping it in her house that it's so accessible?”

He holds up a hand. “I'm not doing this with you right now,” he says. His voice isn't hostile anymore, or angry. He just sounds so sad.

I stare at the floor. “We'll see you at six.”

Chapter 10

Izzy

 

“Izzy! Give Nana a hug.” My grandmother is loud and kind of fakey-sounding. She opens her arms, her gin and tonic in one hand.

I just stand there in the doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen of the house where my dad grew up, causing a backup. She Who Shall Not Be Named and Mom are behind me. We came in Mom's car because Dad was already here. Dad's always here. I got to ride shotgun though, and She Who Shall Not Be Named had to ride in the back. She's lucky Mom didn't make her run behind the car.

I look over my shoulder, past you-know-who to look at Mom.
I told you Nana would want to hug me with her drink in her hand,
I say inside my head, hoping the message will reach her telepathically. I know that sounds stupid, but there are a lot of people who think telepathy is real; I saw a whole show about it.

I can't hear what my mom is thinking, but I'm pretty sure she's telling me to suck it up and hug Nana. My only other choice is to say no and then Uncle Jeremy and Uncle Bruce and Dad will all gang up on me. They'll probably pin me to the wall so Nana can force-hug me.

I feel She Who Shall Not Be Named poking me in the back.

“This is Maxton Airlines, flight double-zero. Please remain in your seats and do not block the aisle,” she says.

If Caitlin had said it, I probably would have laughed. I turn back to Nana and walk all stiff, like I'm going to the electric chair. I keep my arms at my sides. She hugs me and gives me a big kiss on the cheek. I can smell the gin on her breath. It smells mediciney and gross. “How are you doing, Bug?” she whispers.

Bug.
I don't know why she calls me that. Like I'm some kind of insect. Something she wants to crush under her orange patent-leather flip-flop. She's asking how I am, but I know she doesn't really care. She doesn't care about anyone but
her boys
. I wonder if I'd been a boy if she would have cared about me. I guess the Maxton boys don't have any male sperms though. Just the kind that make girls. Uncle Bruce, he's the oldest, he has four girls, two with wife number one, two with the second wife. Then comes Dad with the three girls minus one, and Uncle Jeremy, who just got divorced again, with two girls.

“How you holding up?” Nana asks me, breathing her gin breath on me.

“Fine.” I duck under her arm to get away.

She Who Shall Not Be Named holds up her hands, palms toward Nana. “Don't even try it, Linda,” she says. She's wearing fingerless black gloves and fresh black nail polish on her stubby fingernails. Her eyes are extra black. It's like she turns up the Goth-girl thing when she comes here.

Nana stiffens when her gaze moves to my mom. Like, you can actually
see
it. She takes a sip from her glass. “I'm so glad you came, Julia,” she says, not sounding like she's all that glad. Nana doesn't like Mom. I don't think she ever did. She sees Mom as the competition. She sees all of us Maxton girls that way. Like every second of Dad's life that he gives to us, takes away a second from Nana. I think she was actually pissed at Caitlin when she got killed. Because Caitlin sucked up all that attention.

“Happy Birthday, Linda,” Mom says. She leans in to kiss her even though you can tell she doesn't want to. But she doesn't say anything mean. My mom's classy like that.

“Hey, kiddo!” Uncle Bruce pulls me into a bear hug all rough and kisses me. His red beard that's the same color as my hair is scratchy on my cheek.

“Hey, Uncle Bruce,” I say. He always embarrasses me, hugging me like this. Dad's not all huggy like Uncle Bruce and Uncle Jeremy. I mean he
does
hug me, kind of that side-arm thing. And I know he loves me, but we're not huggy in our house. Not like here. Maybe because we get enough hugs here.

Uncle Bruce spins me around and almost throws me to Uncle Jeremy. “Kiddo,” Uncle Jeremy says, kissing me on top of my head. “You remember Tabitha?”

She's Uncle Jeremy's new girlfriend. She'll probably be wife number three. He started dating her before he moved out of Aunt Pat's bed. That's what I heard Aunt Maria whisper to my mom when we were introduced at the funeral. Aunt Maria is Uncle Bruce's second wife. I wonder if Tabitha realizes that eventually Uncle Jeremy will cheat on her too when she's his next wife.

“Casey here?” I ask Uncle Jeremy. Casey's a year older than me, but we get along really well. She's always been nice to me. Even before my sister died. She never thinks I'm weird, even when I talk about something cool I learned on the History Channel or in a book. Or if she does she doesn't tell me I'm weird to my face.

Uncle Jeremy frowns. “Sorry. Her mom's weekend.”

“But Alice and Maddie are here,” Uncle Bruce tells me. “In the den.”

“Okay.” I walk over to say hi to Aunt Maria, who's taking rolls out of a bakery bag to put in a bread basket. Uncle Jeremy's new girlfriend is standing there with a glass of wine in her hand. She has a lot of makeup on for a family dinner at somebody's house. Especially for dinner with a family who's still in mourning. I've been reading a lot about mourning rituals. According to the Victorians, we're still in
deep
mourning. Technically, Mom and Dad have to wait nine months before they can go into half-mourning. “Hi, Aunt Maria,” I say.

She smiles kind of sad. “Hey, Izzy.” I've always liked Aunt Maria, but I like her even better since Caitlin bit the dust. She doesn't try to cheer me up and she doesn't constantly ask me how I'm doing. It's like she knows how bad it is to be me right now.

I turn to Tabitha, who is younger than Aunt Pat, who was younger than Casey's mom. She's prettier than either of them, though. “Hi.”

She says something, but I'm already walking away. I'm not sure I can invest myself in another one of Uncle Jeremy's wives. I really liked Aunt Pat; she was funny and she used to talk to me like I was a friend instead of just a stupid kid.

I guess I'll go find Alice. She's the same age as me. Fifth grade. I like her fine, but she paints her fingernails with sparkly pink nail polish and she watches Nickelodeon so we don't have a lot in common.

I hear Mom's voice and I stop and turn around to observe the crazy phenomenon called family. It's not like I'm in a big hurry to catch a rerun of
Sam & Cat
.

The kitchen is big, the kind you see in TV shows that want to depict a big-happy-family kind of kitchen. The floor is Spanish tile; there are big granite countertops and a place to sit at to watch Nana whip up smoked salmon pâté and fruit on toothpicks. And of course there's a wet bar. Mom says that Nana had it put in after Dad's dad died. That was when I was a baby, so I never knew him, and I never knew Nana when she didn't have a gin and tonic in her hand or wasn't talking about the next one. I guess, technically, she might be an alcoholic, even though she never seems drunk. Not the way Uncle Jeremy gets sometimes where he laughs a lot and throws beer bottles at Dad and Uncle Bruce and says funny things about people.

I check out everyone in the room, kind of making a picture in my head so I can analyze everything later. She Who Shall Not Be Named is in Nana's refrigerator digging around, looking for a Coke, probably. Everyone is ignoring her; she's ignoring them. Nana is
freshening up
her drink at the wet bar. Mom's talking to Aunt Maria, but they're being so quiet I can't hear what they're saying. Tabitha is kind of standing there, looking like she doesn't belong here. Which she doesn't. Dad and his brothers all have beers in their hands and they're talking together. Dad looks happy, which makes me sad because he never looks happy at our house. I mean, I know he's sad about Caitlin, but he was sad before that.

“Oh, Julia,” I hear Aunt Maria say, and I wonder what she and my mom are talking about. Well, that's not true. I know what they're talking about. The same thing everyone is always talking about. Either Caitlin or She Who Shall Not Be Named. My guess is the live one.

The kitchen smells good. Nana's a good cook. We used to come here almost every Sunday for dinner. Even Mom. Before Caitlin made her smashing exit.

I smile to myself. That's a good one.
Smashing exit
.

Then I accidentally meet She Who Shall Not Be Named's gaze and for a second, I can't look away. She's standing in front of the refrigerator that's covered with photos, mostly of the Maxton boys, but there are a few pictures of us granddaughters. There's a big one of Caitlin laughing. It was the one they put on the cover of the memorial-service-paper thingy. When I look at Caitlin's face and then the other one's face, I see how much they look alike. It's just that Caitlin seems like she's surrounded by light. Maybe it's her beautiful blond hair, or the backlight or some kind of magic that happens when you go to the angels. She Who Shall Not Be Named looks like she's in darkness: black hair, black eye-pencil eyes and eyebrows. But there's a cloud around her, too. A cloud that scares me and makes me feel bad for her at the same time.

Since the accident, I've pretended not to see her, but she's caught me. She knows I see her and I suddenly feel shaky and my eyes get watery. The crazy thing is, her eyes look wet, too. The eyeliner probably. She just keeps looking at me. It's like she wants something from me. But I don't know what it is. And I don't know if I could give it to her, even if I wanted to.

I turn around and walk into the hall. I hear the TV. Nickelodeon. I wipe at my eyes so I don't look stupid and I call Alice's name.