“I see that.”
“Don’t be unkind,” he whispered. “She’s just lost her mother.”
There’d been another girl, one who’d interested Pop. Where had they been that time? She couldn’t even remember—someplace bland and humid. But it hadn’t worked out. Pearl wondered if there had been girls before even her. If there had been, they were gone without a trace.
“Once upon a time,” said Pop, directing himself to Gracie, “when tragedy struck, I took Pearl in. I cared for her and helped her to move forward. Now we’ll both take care of you, okay, sweet girl?”
That was a lovely little narrative, if not quite the whole truth. But what is the truth after all? Just a story we all agree upon.
Gracie nodded, seemed to straighten a bit. She ran a hand over her thin hair, cleared her throat. Pearl thought she might say something. But after a moment of them all staring at each other, Gracie leaned over and threw up on the kitchen floor. This was followed by a coughing fit, one that turned into terrible, uncontrollable it seemed, sobbing.
Pearl looked on in horror—something churning in her middle. Disgust.
“Okay, okay,” said Pop, going to Gracie tenderly. “You’re okay. Let’s get you some rest.”
He wrapped the girl up in his arms. The sobbing subsided some, replaced by whimpering. The girl, already tiny, seemed to shrink and disappear into Pop as he ushered her from the kitchen. He glanced back as they left.
“Pearl? Get that—will you, honey?”
He still called her Pearl when they were at home, though he never ever slipped when they were out, or on a job. And when she was home with him, she still thought of herself by that name. Even though she called herself Elizabeth at that time. Not Liz. Not Beth. Elizabeth, common but still regal, elegant. She had a boyfriend at school; someone she’d kept from Pop. He wasn’t a mark. They went to the movies, and he took her to dinner. They studied together. They’d fooled around, heavily, but not made love. He called her Elizabeth, and it had a nice sound when he whispered it in the dark. Maybe he was a mark, in a way. Her con was that she was a normal girl, a student, his girlfriend. She had a waitressing job, a cash situation at a pizza place. She didn’t want anything but to be the girl he saw when he looked at her.
“I can’t get close enough to you,” he’d said the other night, kissing her. She wasn’t sure what he meant—physically, emotionally, maybe both. She liked him—Jason. He was smart, could play the guitar. He was a doorway to the kind of life other people had. She thought about packing her bags now, taking her very few things, and leaving Pop with his new project. She could go. She had her games, her own money now. She didn’t think he’d try to stop her.
“Sure,” said Pearl loudly. “Why not? I’ll clean up the puke. Like I’m the maid.”
But he had already left her behind to take care of Gracie.
There wasn’t much vomit, just a small puddle of nearly clear bile. She might have felt bad for the girl, if she didn’t hate her.
She was aware of a bubbling anger, something mean and small. What kind of bullshit was this? Some stranger in the house that was supposed to be their forever home. Their place safe from the world.
She heard a wail from upstairs, followed by Pop’s soothing tones. Another wail.
Had she been such a wreck at first? she wondered as she mopped up, threw away the paper towels, scrubbed with a little bleach. She washed her hands in hot water.
No, she hadn’t been.
“There aren’t many girls like you, Pearl,” Pop had said—more than once. “You might be one of a kind.”
Looking back, she saw Gracie joining them was the first dark omen. After that, bad things started happening. Wasn’t that always how it worked? One mistake leading inexorably to the next, like a trip down a steep flight of stairs. But maybe it started back in Phoenix. The Bridget thing.
“Don’t be mad,” said Pop, returning to the kitchen alone. Pearl was still washing her hands, scrubbing them raw in hot water. They hurt when she turned off the faucet.
“Why would I be mad?” she said, sharper than she’d intended.
“She’s for you,” he said, staying by the door. “A sister.”
Did he even hear himself? She almost laughed but then she looked at him—dark circles under his eyes, a fatigued sag to his eyelids. She knew he hadn’t been sleeping. She heard him at night, moving around his room. He’d aged since the problem in Phoenix—deep lines had settled around his mouth and on his brow; he’d grown thinner, taking on a hard, wiry quality. Something about it had rattled him hard. He hadn’t regained his footing.
He came to the table and she sat across from him. She could still smell the vomit, mingling unpleasantly with the bleach.
“You don’t just bring home a sister,” she said. “It’s not like getting a puppy.”
He bowed his head, looking down at his cuticles, which were gnawed and rough. “You are mad.”
“No.”
Yes. She was mad. Not just about the stranger in their home; there were a thousand things. Nothing she could name—just that, lately, she felt like an animal in a cage, pacing. That she was bound to him somehow, without wanting to be. That she could leave him, should leave him. But she couldn’t. She didn’t say any of it.
“You haven’t been yourself,” he said into the silence. “What’s going on?”
“I could say the same to you.”
She got up, put on a kettle for tea—just to get away from him. That stare, those intensely staring eyes and how they saw everything about everyone and knew just how to exploit whatever want, need, fear was lurking beneath the surface.
“It’s your father,” he went on, not turning around to face her. “That whole thing.”
She shrugged, glad he couldn’t see her. She wasn’t sure she could keep the rush of emotion off her face.
“It went well,” she said, her voice going higher than she liked. “Big payout. Just like you said.”
Yes, a big payout. She had a pile of cash, delivered with the promise to never communicate with him again. Then, when she could have gone far from him, never thought about him again, let it all go once and for all—
“You burned him down,” Pop said.
She heard the note of disapproval in his voice. It bothered her, more than it should.
She looked at her watch. She was late for Jason. She was late for Elizabeth; her normie self. Student. Waitress. Ordinary small-town girl. Nothing special. The teakettle started to whistle, and she took it from the stove, poured the hot water into the two mugs she’d retrieved from the cupboard. World’s Best Dad, one of them read. The world was full of little ironies, wasn’t it?
“What if I did?” she said, walking back. She put a cup in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.
Yes. She’d left her father’s life in ashes. He’d moved out of that beautiful house. A messy, public divorce had commenced. His daughters wouldn’t speak to him. Stella hadn’t been his only affair, not by a long shot. There was a whole other family, apparently, another woman, other children. Women he worked with, when the news hit, came forward to tell of his aggression in the work place, his unwelcome advances. A wealthy philanthropist, bastion of the community, revealed as a serial adulterer, a workplace predator. It wasn’t big news. But it was news enough. He’d been removed as CEO of his company, last she heard.