The Song Reader (35 page)

As he walked into his bedroom to get his keys and watch and cell phone charger, he yelled to the kid that everyone had to go now. “I’m leaving and you and your sister are, too. Sorry, but this isn’t a shelter. I have to go to Japan and you’ll have to go back to wherever the hell you came from.”

“How long will you be gone?” the kid said, following him.

Matthew spun around. “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“This building has the most advanced security system in the city. If you’re thinking you’ll sneak in after I’m gone, give it up.” He snapped the band on his Rolex to emphasize his point, and forced himself not to wince. “The one and only reason I’m not calling the police right now is I don’t have time.”

“That’s nice,” the kid said sarcastically.

“Why aren’t you waking up your sister?” He had the charger in his briefcase, along with his tablet laptop and the second corporate Amex he was supposed to use only in emergencies, but now he couldn’t find his goddamn cell. It was in his pants when he fell asleep, wasn’t it? Had it fallen on the floor? He knelt down to look and said, “I told you to get out. If you don’t, I’m calling the security guard to throw you out.”

The boy watched him as he looked around the bedside table, under the bed, everywhere he could think of. Then he said, “Have you ever brought kids back here before?”

“You know I haven’t,” Matthew said, because he was suddenly sure this kid did know. This boy’s eyes were cunning, suspicious, nothing like the innocent child he’d seen the night before. Fucking E. He’d never take it again as long as he lived, if he could just get through this morning and on the plane.

“I don’t think you want to call the security guard.”

“Oh, really?” Matthew stomped over to his bedroom phone and picked up the receiver. “We’ll see about that.”

“I mean,” the kid said quickly, “how will it look when I tell him that you brought me back here for sex?”

“What?” he said, though he’d heard the kid perfectly. “You scheming little—”

“I won’t hurt any of your stuff. I swear. It’s just, I have to let Isabelle sleep. Even with all your yelling, she hasn’t woken up because she’s really sick. I can’t take her out yet or she might die.”

“Boo hoo hoo. And how is that my problem again?”

“It isn’t your problem. I know. But I have to protect my sister.”

Matthew was still holding the receiver, but his finger was hesitating on the 7, the number for security. He didn’t know the security guard beyond awkward hellos in the hall and the less awkward giving of frequent tips, including five hundred dollars last Christmas. What if the man was some kind of kiddie advocate? What if he’d been abused by his father or his priest? The world was full of whiners, crying about what happened to them in their childhood. Unfortunately, even a 275-pound security guard might turn out to be one of them.

The boy stood with his arms crossed, watching Matthew. Matthew was watching him, too, and suddenly he remembered the kid’s name. He’d introduced himself last night in the elevator. His manner had been surprisingly formal. “I’m Danny, sir. Thank you so much for helping us.”

Matthew smiled as it hit him that the kid was bluffing. He told him so, looking straight into his eyes. “You won’t do it because you want to be better than your mother. She’s the liar, not you.”

“Whatever you say,” Danny said, smirking like a monkey. A clever monkey; Matthew had to give him that. “But I’m gonna do whatever I have to do for Isabelle. If that means putting you in jail until they can prove you didn’t have sex with me? Guess you’d miss your plane and all, but if you don’t care about that, then—”

“All right, all right, Jesus Christ!” Matthew banged down the receiver. It was 6:49; he had to go. “But you better get out of here before I get on that plane or—”

“I swear we’ll leave as soon as she has a chance to sleep. Just tell me how to lock the door.”

“It locks automatically. All you have to do is shut it when you get the hell out.” As he walked back into the main room, he was still yelling, “Because once I’m on the plane, I’m calling security. I’ll tell them the whole story and you can try your sex lie; be my guest. I’m sure they’ll realize you’re a little shit long before I’m back in the country.”

He glanced at the baby girl as he walked to the closet for his coat. She did look so peaceful lying there, and she had a beautiful face, just as he remembered. For a split second, he felt sorry for her and her lying brother, but then he realized he still hadn’t found his phone. When he asked Danny if his mother had taken that, too, the kid sighed and nodded.

“I really am sorry, mister.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” Matthew said, walking to the door. “And not half as sorry as you’re going to be if you aren’t gone before the police arrive.”

Of course he was furious; he had too many problems to deal with this mess. And he didn’t want homeless people in his house, but as he reminded himself as he stepped on the elevator, who would?

A wise, humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about the risks and rewards of loving when a single day can change our lives.

Nineteen years ago, a famous filmmaker disappeared from Los Angeles, taking his two children, Dorothea and Jimmy, to a desolate corner of New Mexico. There he raised them in complete isolation without television, computer, radio—not even a newspaper. Now, at twenty-three, Dorothea leaves in search of her missing brother—and ventures into the outside world for the first time, determined to uncover the truth of her family’s past and the terrifying day that changed her father forever . . .

Read on for a look at Lisa Tucker’s

Once Upon a Day

Currently available from Atria Books

S
TEPHEN
S
PAULDING
was very happy, and you can’t say that about most people. He hadn’t sought happiness, but he recognized it. This was his gift: to know what he had.

When it was gone, of course he knew that too. He changed from a man who could smile at strangers first thing in the morning to a man who wouldn’t look anybody in the eye. He’d lost his family in a freak accident, and the rest he let go of as easily as opening his hand and releasing a string of balloons. Good-bye to the family practice he had just started with two friends from his residency. Good-bye to the Victorian house he and Ellen had gone deeply into debt to buy when she got pregnant during his internship. Good-bye to the cradle and the tricycle and the pink and purple birthday party dress Lizzie never had a chance to wear.

More than a year later, he still hadn’t adjusted to the way time itself had been altered. Before there was never enough time, and the list of things he and Ellen had not gotten around to doing was one of many things that still tortured him. The untaken trip to Paris bothered him less than the movies they’d talked about renting. Why hadn’t they watched them? Ellen’s entire list could be watched in a weekend. He knew this because he had done it, several times. He watched the movies his wife had wanted him to, and thought about what she would say if she were there. This was back in the early months, when he was trying to give her gifts, as though she could come back if only he worked harder to make her want this life.

After the accident, there was too much time. Each day stretched before him like a flat Kansas highway, the only landmarks the meals he forced himself to choke down, the few chores he performed, and the occasional walks he took, rarely noticing anything or anyone on his path. He finally bought the old green and white Checker cab not because he needed the income—his compensation from the city would support him forever, especially since he had no desires, nothing he wanted now—but because he could drive it as little or as much as he liked, sixteen hours a day, more if his insomnia was bad.

He wouldn’t have sued, but the city gave him an enormous sum anyway. The newspaper headline called it a “regrettable tragedy.” It was a Sunday in late July; the police were chasing a teenager who had stolen a rusted-out ’84 Toyota from a neighbor’s driveway. The car was worth less than five hundred dollars, but the patrol car that slammed into his family at the intersection had been going over eighty miles an hour. He was driving; Lizzie was in her booster seat in the back, behind Ellen. The teenage thief turned himself in when he heard what had happened. The policeman who was driving took early retirement.

And Stephen, the barely thirty-year-old family practice doc, became a cabbie. What difference did it make? His knowledge of how to heal bodies had done nothing for him anyway. His wife and four-year-old daughter had still died right in front of his eyes.

Now he was learning the quickest way to the airport from any street in St. Louis. How to slide around a bus, and when to change lanes so his customer would feel they were making progress. What times the restaurants and bars closed, and which of his regulars would be likely to drink one too many and need a ride on a Saturday night.

People often mentioned what a safe driver he was. The safest cab driver they’d ever ridden with. He nodded, but he didn’t respond. He never drove without the radio playing. Talk show, pop music, news channel, it didn’t matter. The radio was his excuse not to talk.

The only time he would answer was when a customer asked about the amusement park tickets. They didn’t ask often, even though he’d had the tickets laminated and kept them displayed above the visor, right next to his license. Stephen wasn’t surprised. He knew most people aren’t interested in their cab drivers.

He wasn’t surprised; still, he longed for the question. He longed for another opportunity to tell the whole story of that perfect July day at the amusement park: riding the water slides and the Ferris wheel and the child’s roller coaster; eating hot dogs and ice cream—mint chocolate chip, Ellen’s favorite; trying to win a giant stuffed panda bear, and when he couldn’t make the ring toss (a setup, he was sure), buying the bear for his daughter anyway.

Every time he told the story, he added a few more details. As the months went by, the story often filled the entire drive; sometimes he would still be talking while his customer was trying to hand him money and get away.

He knew he was going too far, but he couldn’t help himself. Back at his apartment whenever he tried to think of that day he drew a blank. It was only in the cab, talking to strangers, that he seemed to be able to bring it all to life: the feel of the sun on the back of his hands and the bright drips of green falling off their cones onto the hot pavement and how awkward and adorable Lizzie looked that night, lugging the giant panda to their car.

He didn’t realize how he’d begun to live for these discussions until a rainy morning in April, when they suddenly came to an end.

He’d picked up a girl at the bus station downtown. One of the weirdos, though this one wasn’t pierced or tattooed or obviously strung out, but even more bizarre, naturally pale as a made-up Goth, but dressed like a throwback to the fifties: long flared black skirt, fluffy pink sweater, even the white ankle socks and saddle oxford shoes. Her hair was in a thick braid, twisted like some kind of tight crown on top of her head, and she was sitting up so straight she looked uncomfortable, eyes unblinking, small white hands folded carefully in her lap. Stephen had already put her out of his mind when she mentioned the tickets about ten minutes into the ride. But before he could tell her about the slides or the food or even the perfect weather that day, she noticed what no one else had: that the tickets weren’t stubs.

“What happened?” she said. “Why didn’t you ever use those?”

He flushed with a confusion that quickly turned to anger. It had taken him nearly a year to perfect the story of the amusement park—for chrissakes, couldn’t he have even this? He wasn’t asking for all the days and hours and minutes he would have had with Ellen and Lizzie, he was just asking for one more day.

Stephen had been taking his family to the park when their car was broadsided. Lizzie had wanted to go all summer, and that day they had the tickets: they were really, finally going. All he had done in his story was change “were going” to “had gone.” A mere verb shift, and yet it changed everything.

And now this strange girl in his cab was forcing him to change it back.

Her voice was entirely innocent. She had no idea what she’d taken from him. But then again, he had no idea what she was about to give.

W
E HAD A FATHER
who loved us. Even as my brother Jimmy turned his back on the Sanctuary, I knew he had to still believe this, deep in his soul.

In my earliest memory, Father was holding Jimmy and me on his lap, telling us how important we were to him. More important than all his money, more important than the Sanctuary, more important than the stars in the sky or the ground below. The most important thing in the known world, the most important thing imaginable. “I want you two to be happy here forever,” he said, his voice as tender as his arms around us. “Whatever you want you can have, as long as it won’t hurt you.”

As long as it won’t hurt you.
Too bad Father had such an active imagination. When I was eight years old, I read a story about a girl on a tire swing, with long flowing hair glittering in the sun as she moved back and forth. I asked for a swing of my own, but Father couldn’t do it. “Swings can wrap themselves around your neck and choke you, Dorothea,” he said. “You can fly out of a swing and sever your spine.” When Jimmy wanted paints—not watercolors, like we already had, but real rich colors, thick—so he could try to copy the encyclopedia picture of a Roman centurion onto his bedroom wall, Father wanted to give them to him, I know he did. He was shaking his head sadly when he told Jimmy, “Those paints are poison. The toxins could seep into your skin.”

From pets that might bite to bicycles that could crash, our father had to protect us. He couldn’t bear the idea of a plastic swimming pool, no matter how shallow, because a child can drown in only a few inches of water. Climbing trees was a sure way to break your arm, or worse. There were dozens of trees on our property, but none of them had limbs lower than twenty feet, thanks to Father and the chain saw he kept locked in the storage shed. From my bedroom window, the trees looked like a clump of upright celery stalks.