The Steps (7 page)

“You know I can't do that, sweetheart,” he said.

“Why?” I could feel tears coming.

“I have a family here,” he said. “I like it here.”

He couldn't come home because he liked it here? How insulting to me! That was it. “WELL, I DON'T LIKE YOU BEING HERE!” I yelled.

“Don't yell, young lady,” he said, startled. It wasn't like my yelling would bother anyone. Lucy and Penny were yelling much louder upstairs.

“You like them better!” I said. I started to cry for real. I hadn't factored into my equation that Jack would have absolutely no interest in moving home where he belonged. “You forgot all about me.”

He tried to grab me into a hug, but I jumped from his lap and shoved him away.

“That's not true, Annabel,” he said. “How could you think that?”

“They call you Dad! They get to see you every day! The only way you remember me is by my school picture on the refrigerator.”

He sat down next to where I had scrunched myself into a ball on the sofa and he rubbed my back. “Annabel, you're one of the most important people in the world to me. You don't know how hard it was leaving you and moving here.”

“You seem to have done it pretty okay!” I said.

He stopped rubbing. I could tell I had hurt him. I was glad.

“Annabel, you were the only part of my life in New York that was good. I wasn't happy there. And there was another part of my heart, and that's Penny. You don't know how many times I have wished that you could be here too, so all the pieces could be in place. But that's not always possible.”

I repeated my original point. “I think you should move back to New York.”

He had let me get in one mean comment, but he wasn't going to let in another. “Enough,” he said, and I knew he meant it. “Besides, what would you have me do about Penny, Lucy, Angus, and Beatrice?”

“They could come to New York too.” I thought this was a pretty generous thing of me to say.

Jack said, “Would it surprise you to know that Penny and I considered that option?”

I nodded. I was surprised. Seemed to me like they had just decided to live their lives without consulting me, or Lucy, and asking what we thought the best options were.

Jack continued, “New York is a very expensive city. And Lucy and Angus have already gone through so much, Penny thought it would be too much of a move to take them so far from home. Besides, I love it here. I'm happy here. Can you understand that? Penny and I hoped that you would like it here and maybe you would consider spending part of the year, during your summer and Christmas holidays, with us in Sydney. Be a part of this family, as well as the family you have with Bubbe and Angelina.”

“Then, why do you always treat me like a guest?” Jack looked totally shocked by my question.

I never got a chance to hear Jack's answer. The phone rang. Jack answered it. The voice on the other end pained him even more than what I had just been telling him. His face took on that confused, sad, irritated look I remembered from Manhattan.

He handed the phone to me. “It's your mother,” he said. “We'll finish this conversation in the morning, young lady.” What was up with the “young lady” business? Jack was only in his mid thirties. This new language was way too radical for someone so young. Australia and too many children had turned Jack into one big S-Q-U-A-R-E.

Jack went upstairs, his shoulders slumped. Angelina also walks away in misery after she talks to Jack on the phone. Whatever is between them, they hate having to talk to each other.

“Angelina!” I said into the phone. I was so excited to hear her voice, I didn't care about the tears that had just been pouring down my cheeks.

“Baby, baby, baby!” she screamed. The cutest thing about Angelina is that when she is excited, she talks a mile a minute. Also, you never met anyone who loves talking on the phone as much as Angelina. One time while she was waiting in a hallway for an audition, she was talking to me on her cell phone. The audition was for a telephone commercial, and she got the part because the producers heard her yammering on the phone outside their offices, and when they came outside to hear who was making all the noise, they were amazed that someone could be that pretty and also so excited about talking on the phone. Justine, Gloria, and Keisha still call Angelina “the fast-talking telephone lady” because for a while you could not turn on your TV and not see Angelina selling you a long-distance service.

“You're not going to believe what I have to tell you!” Angelina squealed.

“What time is it there?” I asked her. I was used to talking to Jack on the phone from another hemisphere, but not Angelina. It seemed hard to believe that she could be in Hawaii, thousands of miles away, across an ocean and above the equator, and I could hear her like she was standing next to me.

“It's late night here. But I couldn't wait to tell you what happened. Harvey proposed! We're getting married!”

I was so shocked I didn't know what to say. This was welcome news—
not!
It was one thing to date Wheaties' dad, but to marry him? And not ask me first? This felt worse than Jack moving to Australia.

“Annabel? Are you there?”

“I'm here,” I said, very quiet.

“Are you happy for me, baby?”
Happy for you?
I thought.
What about happy for me?
I hadn't even gotten used to Penny, the Steps, and a new baby half sister. I wasn't ready to go through it all over again. I still hadn't recovered from the first round.

“I guess,” I said.
NO!
I thought.

“It's a big change, I know, Annabel baby, but it's going to be great. GREAT! We've set a date for the wedding for next month, and I want you to be my maid of honor. I thought you could design the dress yourself and we could take it down to the Lower East Side to be made and as soon as you get home we'll go shopping for my bridal dress and Bubbe is so excited you would not believe it she flew to Hawaii to look at bridal magazines with me and make wedding arrangements—you know how she's been dying for a wedding—and guess what else?”

Angelina must have known I wasn't going to be totally thrilled by her news because if Bubbe had already flown from Florida to Hawaii to be with her, then Angelina must have known she was getting married for several days before calling to tell me.

“What else?” I said, but I thought I already knew. Harvey had just proposed and they were having a wedding in a month? This whole deal was so
90210.

“You're going to be a big sister! We're having a baby next summer! And Harvey wants to buy a new apartment big enough for all of us—”

This is how mad I was: I hung up the phone, then unplugged it so she could not call me back.

I went into Lucy's room and lay down on the cot. Lucy was sitting on her bed, sewing lace trim onto a sleeve for Beatrice's dress.

“Parents are so stupid,” I said.

“I don't know what is wrong with those people,” Lucy added.

“I've had it,” I announced. Whatever happened to normal parents who first got married and then had children, who stayed together, had regular jobs, and didn't traipse around all over the world bringing new steps into their children's lives?

Lucy put down her sewing and jumped onto my cot. Beads from that afternoon's play sprayed onto the floor. She grabbed my hand and said, “Then, let's do something about it.”

I never thought Lucy would have the guts to pull off such a stunt.

I was wrong. Way wrong.

I woke up the next morning, seated upright, my body gently rocking. As I opened my eyes I saw a conductor walking through the . . . train aisle? “Last stop, Melbourne, ten minutes,” the conductor said.

Melbourne? Huh? Where was I? And why was Lucy's sleeping head on my shoulder? I looked down at the light weight I felt on my chest as I breathed—and when did I get well-developed boobies?

Then I remembered. Lucy and I had run away. She had masterminded an incredible escape. We would be arriving in Melbourne to visit her Granny Nell any minute.

We had started the night before by walking in on Jack and Penny, who were making out on the sofa in the candlelit living room. They were listening to sexy soul music, and they obviously didn't remember that Lucy and I were both mad at them. “Good night,” we called out over the mood music. “Happy New Year!” They were so into each other they didn't even look up. And can I tell you that it was just past eight o'clock in the evening, and they didn't even notice that we were saying good night so early? Disgusting.

We placed a sign on Lucy's bedroom door that said, P
LEASE DO NOT DISTURB US UNTIL TOMORROW MORNING OR YOU WILL RUIN OUR SCIENCE PROJECT
. T
HAT MEANS YOU
, A
NGUS
! As an extra precaution we placed pillows under our blankets in the shape of sleeping bodies. Lucy figured it would be after breakfast before anyone even noticed we were gone.

Lucy pulled out two short dresses from her closet. She handed me Kleenex to fill our training bras. We also dug into a pile of Penny's discarded makeup, and we applied lipstick, eyeliner, and eye shadow.

“Just trust me,” she said. “We're teenagers going to a New Year's party. Play the part.”

We climbed out her bedroom window and walked toward the ferryboat station. “My feet hurt, I can't walk anymore,” I said. Lucy had also made me wear a pair of play high heels. “Can't we take a cab to the train station instead of the ferryboat?”

“Genius, we're twelve years old. We don't have loads of money.” Lucy's hair was moussed up into a blond skyscraper.

“I do,” I said. Bubbe had given me a wad of emergency money at the airport in New York. She said it was for an “emergency,” but we both knew it was for shopping. And in Australia, because of the currency exchange rate, I actually had almost a third more money than Bubbe had given me. I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled like I was in New York again. Ten minutes later a cab came by after dropping some passengers off up the street.

“Bubbe always says to put your money where your mouth is,” I told Lucy.

She rolled her eyes and got in the cab.

Lucy directed the driver to the train station. He looked into the rearview mirror twice, trying to decide whether or not we were old enough to be in a cab going to the train station on New Year's Eve.

Lucy pushed out her new bosom and said to me, for the cab driver to hear, “Like, I am so totally excited about James's party! like, I am going to get so totally wasted and totally make out with him all night when the clock strikes midnight. Like everyone is going to be at this party!” She pulled—get this!—a
cigarette
out of her purse and leaned toward the front seat. She asked the driver, “Mind if I smoke in here?”

My eyes almost burst out of their sockets. I remembered that Lucy had said she wanted to be an actress, but I had no idea she could be this good.

“Yeah, I do mind,” the driver said. But he drove on.

I decided to play the game with Lucy. “Like, I am totally having the most major sweet sixteen party for my birthday this year!” I tried to talk in an Australian accent too. I wasn't half bad.

Lucy said, “I had one for mine. Sixteen was such a great birthday. Now that I'm almost seventeen, my mum goes, she goes, ‘So, like, how do you want to celebrate?' and I go, ‘Like, with my friends, okay?' because I am so tired of having birthday parties with my parents around.”

The driver stopped looking at us in the rearview mirror.

We had to run from the cab to catch the overnight train to Melbourne. We might not have gotten past the train conductor at the platform, who was directing people to their seats, if it had not been for the middle-aged couple who were totally drunk, standing ahead of us in line to board the train. “Dad's totally trashed,” Lucy whispered to the train conductor as she showed him our tickets, the tickets she and Angus were supposed to use before it was decided I was coming to visit Australia instead. “Please excuse him.” She blushed as if on cue. Impressive!

“I'm your father now, eh?” the drunk man slobbered.

“Shut yer trap!” the woman yelled at him.

Lucy and I both put on our most embarrassed looks. “They do this every New Year's Eve,” Lucy mumbled to the conductor.

The train conductor shook his head with contempt for our “parents” and concern for us. “I've got two seats open in first class if you two good girls want to get a good night's sleep and let those two sleep it off in economy.”

“Oh, yes please!” Lucy said.

“Do you think they'll be okay if we leave them alone?” I asked her. I scrunched my face into a worried look.

“Mum and Pop can take care of themselves! I've had enough of this!” Lucy said. She stomped toward first class as the train conductor shook his head at our “parents.”

First class was nice (it didn't actually look that different to me from economy, but I was impressed all the same), but it wasn't like the extra seat space meant we would get any extra sleep. The adults riding in the car were drinking champagne and chattering, waiting for that “10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, Happy New Year” thing.

Once the conductor left us alone at our seats, we burst out laughing for about fifteen minutes straight. We almost fell out of our chairs from laughing. If I had been drinking a Coke, I would have been snarfing it all over our seats. I don't think I've ever laughed that hard with Justine, Gloria, or Keisha.

“We are toooooo smooooooth,” I giggled.

“Oh, we were the bomb!” Lucy laughed. She got that expression from me. Nobody in Australia says that.

After we stopped laughing, we sat side by side, silent for a few minutes, as if we were both wondering,
Now what?
When we shared her room, we rarely said much to each other. Well, when I first arrived, Lucy had talked a lot, but she had figured out pretty quickly from my silence that I did not want to be chatterbox queen with her.