Prettiest Doll (14 page)

A few minutes later, when Dan pushed open the exit door to the right of the screen, I stepped outside into the cold morning. I breathed in, loving the first breath, the shock in your lungs of outside air. “If we see a policeman, be cool,” Dan said. “Don't run unless he looks like he's going to come over.” I nodded, glad I had said I wanted to go with him, even without knowing where it was we were heading.

“I have something I have to do, too,” I said.

He didn't say anything, just took my mittened hand, at first to steer me around a line of people waiting for a bus, but even after we'd gotten clear around them, he didn't let go.

We rode the train again. The trip seemed shorter in that magical way that all trips do the second time, when you already know the way. Changing trains this time was simple, a breeze; I didn't worry at all. It was still early—not even seven—and the sidewalks were wet. I couldn't tell if it had rained overnight or if somebody had watered all the lawns.

Some of the houses were closer to the street than the others. I tried to see inside them, but they all looked dark and shuttered up.

“Somebody must live in
one
of them,” I said.

“What are you talking about? People live in all of them.”

“Well, why aren't there any lights on? Why isn't anyone getting ready for school?”

“They are. You just can't see.”

“Or making breakfast. Something.”

“The kitchens are probably in the back.”

I marveled about that as we walked: houses so big that you couldn't see the kitchen from the street. Even in Mrs. Drucker's house, you could see the kitchen window from the sidewalk.

“I wonder if you can smell bacon frying upstairs,” I said. “I don't see what the point of bacon is if you can't smell it frying all over the house.”

“Can we not talk for a while?” Dan asked.

I was all set to be mad, but he hadn't asked in a mean way, so I just stayed quiet.

Across the street, I noticed a woman walking the cutest little dog, a Chihuahua in a pink fur coat. The woman wore a gray coat over blue pajama bottoms and slippers that looked like moccasins except with fur in them. She stood patiently behind the dog, holding a plastic bag, which, I could see, was filled with dog poo. I wanted to laugh out loud. I thought about telling Dan, but I knew he didn't want to talk, so I kept it to myself, laughing in my head about the lady who walked behind her little dog collecting poo, like a really weird maid. Then I thought that that dog had a better coat than I did, and, even though it was still funny, I didn't want to laugh anymore.

When we stood again in front of Dan's father's house, I said, “Do you want me to wait out here?”

“No,” he said, but still he didn't move.

“Why are we standing here?” I asked, trying to be gentle.

“I'm just rehearsing it in my head.”

The house looked as unlit and unlived in as all the others. I counted six windows downstairs, three on either side of the double front doors, each framed in those black shutters, each with closed curtains. There were five windows upstairs, bedroom windows, I decided. There was probably a TV and a computer in each bedroom.

Dan said his daddy had a wife and two kids. Four people. What did they do with all those extra rooms? If the wife was anything like Mama, maybe she had a separate pantry for all her baking equipment and cookbooks. Maybe there was a living room and a family room both, and a separate dining room. Maybe a room for hunting trophies and a room for sewing and a room for reading, which seemed silly, because most people like reading in bed anyway, so why would you need a separate room?

“Okay,” Dan finally said. He began walking down the long curved driveway toward the house. I followed a step or two behind, looking up at the second story to see if we were being watched, but the drawn curtains didn't move.

Now that we were up close, the lawn looked even bigger than it had from the sidewalk. You could play soccer on it, it was so big, but there wasn't a single rut or gopher hole or mole mound that I could see. I wondered if you were lying on it in the middle of July, if it would have that amazing smell of sunny grass, and guessed probably not.

The front doors were tall and shiny black, each with a silver door knocker in the shape of a horse's head. The knocker part was like the bridle. Dan just stood there, looking up. I gave him a minute to rehearse some more. Then I said, “You should knock. He might have to leave for work soon,” and Dan nodded and leaned forward fast and pressed the doorbell I hadn't noticed off to the side and I thought,
If you have two door knockers, what do you even need a doorbell for?

We couldn't hear the bell in the house at all, not like at home, where you can hear when someone rings your neighbor's doorbell. Dan looked at me with his eyebrows arched in a now-what? kind of way, and I said, “Do you think you should press it again?” and suddenly there was the sound of metal sliding on metal and I saw him swallow and I forgot about myself, my own thudding heart, and focused only on him.

The door opened, and a thin, dark-haired woman smiled down at us and said, “Yes?” She was dressed in riding boots and breeches, which I knew from Imogene, even though Imogene only wore breeches for shows. Her hair was pulled back in a tidy ponytail, and she wore bright red lipstick and mascara and eyeliner. I had never seen an adult so made up so early in the morning. At pageants, the contestants sometimes have to report to the judges at seven with all their hair and makeup already done, but usually the moms look terrible.

“Uh,” Dan said. He licked his lips. “Uh, is Gary here?”

The woman's face froze for a second, and then it seemed as if her eyes and mouth were scrambling to get back to normal. “Danny? Is that you?”

He nodded.

“My goodness, why didn't you call? Did your father know you were coming?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, dear. Gosh.” She looked nervously behind her, and then back at us. “This is such a hectic morning—”

It didn't seem very hectic. No kids screaming or crying, and her all dressed, with her hair and makeup done.

“I'm sorry,” Dan said, looking at his shoes.

I stepped forward. “We wouldn't mind waiting, if you think Dan's daddy would like to see him,” I said, flashing my best pageant smile and looking right in her eyes, which in a beauty pageant is how you win but in real life is how you let people know you mean business.

“I'm just afraid that you wouldn't have time for a proper visit,” she said, glancing down at her watch. “But I'll be glad to tell Gary to give you a call. He has your number?”

She was getting ready to close the door on us. I racked my brain, remembering how Mrs. Fogelson said to find a way to draw your subject out.

“Ma'am, can I ask you something?” I said.

She smiled a stretched-out smile at me, knowing there wasn't a good way to close a door on a kid who called you ma'am.

“What is it, dear?” she said.

“I couldn't help noticing your breeches, and I was wondering, do you give your horse cooked feed?”

She stared for a second, obviously caught off-guard.

Finally, she said, “Sometimes. My horses are primarily forage fed.”

Horses. Plural.

“Are they pretty mellow, your horses?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, they are.” She smiled a little and crossed her arms. “They're pasture animals, you know.”

“Oh, I know, I know.” Thank the good Lord for Imogene always carrying on about Honey. “I've heard that horses that eat a lot of grain are more high-strung. Do you think that's so?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I pay a lot of attention to what they eat. I tend to favor shredded beet pulp.”

“What about sweet feed? What do you think about that?”

She started talking about protein and ADF values. I didn't pay any attention. I just nodded and crinkled up my forehead in an I'm-really-paying-attention kind of way and planned my next question, thinking that the longer she talked to us, the more likely it was that Dan's daddy would show himself. She babbled on. A southern accent. Maybe Kentucky, I thought, thinking of the Derby. She had thick fingers with short nails, unpolished. That surprised me. I just assumed rich women got manicures, maybe every day.

“I'm a big believer in linseed jelly,” she was saying. “In moderation, of course.”

Crazy. Plumb crazy. I know crazy horse people, people like Imogene who live and breathe horses, but this was different. Imogene is thirteen. This was a
mother.

“Do your children like to ride?” I asked.

“Well, you'd think they would, wouldn't you? I mean, it's in their blood. I come from a long line of horse people.” She smiled modestly, as if she'd accidentally been bragging on herself. “But no. They're just not interested. They like their soccer, their gymnastics.” She snorted a little, shaking her head.

She had just had a whole big long conversation with me and it hadn't even occurred to her that she didn't know my name.

Talking about her own children made her remember that we were standing on her front steps and that she wanted to get rid of us. “I'm sorry, but I really must fly. I hear the children now. And Danny, well, I'll tell your dad you were here. I'm sure he'll call you. How long are you going to be in town?”

I strained to hear. No kid noises of any kind that I could tell.

She had half-closed the door when, behind her, a man said, “Suzy, who's that? Who's there?”

Dan, who hadn't said a word during the whole horse conversation, looked up and said, in a hopeful way, “Dad?”

Suzy managed to glare at us and giggle at the same time. “Well, look who's here, baby,” she said, pulling back the door.

Dan's father was dressed in a dark gray suit, the kind you never see men in Luthers Bridge wear, except at funerals. I couldn't help wondering if he was an undertaker. He was pale skinned and unsmiling and smelled like shoeblack, which made me look down. Sure enough, his loafers didn't have a scuff on them. He wore a white shirt and a blue tie. He looked like someone who did not care to bother with hugging.

“Danny. My God. What are you doing here?”

Dan looked up at him, and then I realized he was tall, maybe even taller than my daddy, who was a linebacker for the Horace Widener Mountaineers and was maybe more fat than tall, but still.

“I ... I—”

“Are you all right?” his daddy asked.

“I have to talk to you,” Dan said. He was rubbing his hands together, slippery with invisible soap. His nose was red with cold.

Dan's father looked at Suzy, who said, “Well, now, Gary, just look at the time!”

Then he looked back at Dan and said, “Come in, then,” and Suzy kind of rolled her eyes and smiled in a fakey way and said, “Fine.
I'll
take them. It's not like this lesson hasn't been on the books for
weeks
now!” and flounced off.

We stepped into the front hallway, which was almost as big as our living room and dining room both, with a chandelier hanging from the two-story ceiling and a curved wooden staircase with carpet the same color as the bodice of my new pageant dress. Mama was right—burgundy does make you think of Christmas. I thought that, in a couple of weeks, Suzy was probably going to have a nine-foot Fraser fir delivered and set up right at the base of the stairs, lit in hundreds of little white lights like the trees at the Walmart Supercenter in Springfield, with maybe an electric train choo-chooing around the base all the time, so that whenever the kids came into the room, they could see it without having to press the start button first.

I wanted to think more about what Christmas would be like in this house—the piles of presents under the tree, in matching wrapping paper, not the
Luthers Bridge Morning Gazette,
the pine garlands running up the staircase, the smell of apple cider on the stove, or maybe, since this house was too big to smell like food, the smell of apple cider candles—but then I remembered that the Jacobsons were Jewish and probably didn't celebrate Christmas anyway. And then I noticed that Mr. Jacobson was staring at us both and saying, “What's this about, Danny? And who's this girl?”

HE escorted us into a room off the front hall, paneled in dark wood and lined in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A room just for reading. I knew it.

Dan and I sat on the leather couch, but Mr. Jacobson crossed his arms and leaned against the corner of the desk, a way of staying above us.

“So? What's going on?” he asked.

Dan looked at the rug. “I ran away.”

“Who's this girl?” he asked again.

“Liv. A friend.”

I tried to smile, but it was so obvious something was wrong.

“A girlfriend? Is she pregnant? Is that what this is about?”

“Hey!” I said.

Dan put his hand on my arm. “No,” he said to his daddy. “She's my friend.”

I wanted to say something about being only thirteen, but then I thought it might not be such a good idea to draw attention to how young I was. Mr. Jacobson looked angry enough already.

“I don't get it. What's with you just showing up here all of a sudden? No warning, no nothing.” Mr. Jacobson spread out his hands and shrugged his shoulders, like he was telling someone else, an invisible person in the room who would get it and take his side, how rude his son was.

“I didn't know I was supposed to
warn
you,” Dan said.

“Well, then here's a word of advice, Danny. Here's something you can learn from me, okay? I mean, you're brilliant, you're a genius, you're goddamn Albert Einstein, but you don't know to call before showing up at my house at seven in the morning? Where one of my kids might just happen to open the door and want to know who the hell you are? Here's a tip, Danny. Call before just showing up. Can you do that? Huh?”