“The store is not doing so well, Pearl,” he said. “I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“The store never does well,” said Pearl. “It’s a bookstore. That’s the model.”
“Yeah, but it’s been operating in the red all year.”
Pearl shrugged. The mysteries of how her mother made ends meet did not interest her. It’s your job to be a kid, my job to worry about everything else, which was a very motherly thing that the nonmotherly Stella often said.
“There’s a stack of past due bills,” said Charlie. Then he shook his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. You’re just a kid.”
“She owns the building.”
It was a big warehouse on the bad side of town, an area that was supposed to gentrify but hadn’t. There was someone in Stella’s life who had given her money in the past, a large sum. She turned to him when things got tight and he always came through. Who he was, why he’d give Stella money, Pearl had no idea. Stella called him her “benefactor.” But she hadn’t mentioned him in a while.
“Yeah, but there’s a tax bill she hasn’t paid,” said Charlie.
Pearl shrugged.
“Forget it. I’ll talk to her again,” said Charlie with an easy wave. “She’ll have a plan for how to manage if I know Stella.”
Did anyone know Stella?
Pearl held an unread paperback in her hands. On the cover a faceless woman in a flowery dress drifted dreamily past a beach house. She stacked the book in the box with the others.
Pearl watched Charlie pack and seal, lift and carry. She pretended not to watch him, or to notice that he sometimes watched her. She didn’t know how old he was; he didn’t look much older than the senior boys at school—he was narrow, pretty around the eyes, clean-shaven always. He had a long nose and full mouth that looked very serious until right before he smiled.
“What about your father?” asked Pearl. He rarely talked about himself, his family, where he came from. Just snippets here and there.
“My father,” he said, dropping a box, “was a monster.”
“Really?”
He turned to her, wiped a forearm across the sweat on his brow. “Yes, really. He was a drunk, an abuser. A con man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s dead now.” Another box on the dolly. His face was still; there was no tension to him, as if he was just stating the facts.
“And your mom?”
“She’s gone, too.” He sealed the final box.
“It’s just you.”
“Yes. An orphan. The only child of unhappy people.”
“That—sucks,” she said. Because what else was there to say?
He shrugged. “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset, right? What’s that book? Pinkalicious?”
A book about a spoiled girl who was in a rage over cupcakes.
“But she got very upset.”
Charlie smiled in that knowing way he had.
“And how did that work out for her?” he asked.
“I think she made herself sick—or something like that.”
“So there you go.” He nodded in affirmation and Pearl laughed as he rolled the dolly out to the front door, where the UPS guy would pick the boxes up. The sun was setting, and the store was completely empty. The after-school thing had petered out. The open mic night dried up when they stopped serving free food and wine, which they could ill afford in the first place.
They stopped for Chinese food on the way home, and he parked in front of the house, walking her inside. He carried her heavy backpack and the food. She opened the door.
“I have to talk to your mom. Maybe she’ll eat with us.”
He was going to leave. She could tell. He had that sad, careful look that grown-ups had right before they were about to disappoint you in some way. Stella had used him up, probably she’d stopped paying him or something. That’s what she did. She took everything she could from people and, when they were done, she showed them the door, not caring whether they walked, ran, yelled or cried.
I never asked you for a thing, Pearl had heard Stella say to more than one angry beau, friend, neighbor. And that was true. Stella never had to ask.
But the house was dark and quiet when they went inside. Pearl turned on the lights; Charlie put down her bag, carried the food to the kitchen. Pearl’s morning dishes were where she’d left them.
Something. Something made the hair stand up on the back of her neck, made her breath catch.
“Stella?” Charlie called out.
Their eyes met in the dim of the messy kitchen, and something passed quicksilver between them. She couldn’t even say what. A kind of knowledge, an awareness of a subtle shift of energy. Over the years, she’d come back to that moment. It would mean something different every single time she recalled it.
He walked past her, brushing close, hurried. She caught the scent of him—soap and paper. Pearl stayed rooted, listening to his footfalls move from room to room.
When he called out in shock and terror, his voice a vibrato of despair, she stayed stone still, frozen, unable to move, unable to think. Time stopped.
Oh, God. Oh, Stella. No! Oh, nonononono.
Pearl followed the sound of his wailing and stood shaking in the doorway. Charlie was on his knees beside the bed. Stella stared unseeing, eyes red and glassy, her neck black with bruising. Pearl felt part of herself die, too.
SIXTEEN
Selena
She pulled into her mother’s driveway, the boys both uncharacteristically quiet in the back. In the rearview mirror, she saw that Stephen was dozing, but Oliver stared out the window, frowning.
“Everything’s okay,” she said. “Just an unexpected visit to Grandma.”
Oliver caught her eyes in the mirror, looking older than his years. Stephen was a little Tonka trunk, chunky, rough-and-tumble, oblivious. But Oliver was an observer. His expression, the one he wore when she tried to keep the Santa thing going or convince him that he was going to one day love brussels sprouts, was skeptical, nearing disdain.
“Okay,” he said.
She looked up at the house. Her mom, Cora, stood in the doorway, waving. She was a small woman who seemed to be shrinking a little bit every time Selena saw her. Cora and Marisol both got the compact, petite thing. Selena got the tall, athletic thing. Secretly, she always wished she was tiny like her sister. Paulo, Cora’s second husband, was tall behind her, nearly filling the door frame.
“Paulo!” cried Oliver, frown dropping, replaced with a grin. Stephen stirred awake, groggy.
Paulo—a husky, jovial guy—was beloved by the boys. He was a bear hugger, a piggyback ride giver, Lego builder, all day at Extreme Jump kind of grandpa. No kids or grandkids of his own, he was fresh to the fight, as he liked to say. He had lots to give to her, her sister and their kids. Which was nice, because Selena’s actual father was an impatient jerk—always annoyed with the kids, their noisemaking, their poor table manners, their fighting. Scolding and frowning was his default setting. He thought they were pampered, hassled Selena and Graham about their lack of discipline, their lack of scheduling, and just made himself generally difficult to be around. Then he wondered why they weren’t all closer and complained that they didn’t visit enough.