“We’re excited to sit down with you and Bonnie.” Tom shook her hand firmly.
“For Margaret’s girl? Anything.” We followed Deb into the room. Tom was all confidence, shoulders back. But when Deb’s smile slipped away, she looked like a woman held hostage.
She knew something. She knew something about my mother.
The room was lined with windows, all of them gauzy with curtains that gave the room a womblike pastel hush. A chandelier shone like a flattering spotlight on a tufted love seat. The walls were lined with images of Deb and Bonnie, posing with a menagerie of people, celebrities and otherwise. Oprah. Johnny Carson. A local restaurant owner beaming over a pizza box.
Bonnie Clarkson wore a tight shift dress that matched the pink velvet love seat so closely she could vanish into it at the right angle. Her flossy hair was in a high ponytail. I couldn’t help looking at the scar that snaked between her mouth and the top of her right cheekbone. Rubbery, shinier than the soft flesh around it, curved like a deflated letter J. When she saw me, her eyes widened, though she made no move to get up. “You’re here.” Bonnie darted a glance at her mother for clarification. “Josephine. The first one.”
The way she said it gave me a rush of goose bumps. She was hung up on the sequence of the Miracle Babies, just like I was. Sisters squabbling over birth order. “Hello, Bonnie,” I said. “The seventh one.”
“We,” Deb said, “are going to sit down with Josephine and Thomas and have a little chat.” I caught something in her voice, a warning tapped in Morse code, hard for me to access. Bonnie scooted over and I approached, conscious of the rusty ketchup stain on my jeans, the careless bun at the base of my neck. It was the same style I wore in the lab, keeping my hair out of my face, but in here it felt too plain.
Deb was talking. “If you’re here to discuss your mother, Josephine, you’ll need to follow the same rules as any other guest. Don’t dwell on anything too depressing.”
“Too depressing?” I repeated. “Are you aware that my house was burned down and that my mother hasn’t been seen in three days? Where’s the positive spin on that?” I smiled, but the words were heated with sarcasm.
Deb maintained steady eye contact with me as she sat, smoothing her skirt over her thighs. “Well! To the point. Just like our Margaret. Little Miss Holier-Than-Thou. Let me clue you in about your mother: For all her brains, she never understood how to reach common ground. A little diplomacy goes a long way, but your mother couldn’t be bothered. I see the apple doesn’t fall far from that tree.”
I was speechless for a second, hearing my mother described by someone who’d known her in a way I never could. Holier-Than-Thou. As a kid, I’d wanted to meet the other Homesteaders so I could piece together more about Bellanger, but this was unexpected. Seeing my mother as a brainy, self-righteous young woman, a pre–Mother One.
“We’re so sorry, Deb,” Tom said, smooth. “Josie is going through a lot right now.”
“Sorry,” I echoed, trying to calm down. Flies and honey: I knew this. I was usually pretty good at hiding my bluntness under a layer of politeness, something my mother had never taught me, something I’d had to learn from the world around me. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
Deb nodded, mildly appeased.
A framed photo of the 1982 reunion caught my eye, and I stepped closer. A significant chunk of us were missing from the image. My mother and me; the Grassis; the Kims. Only five Mother-Girl pairs had made an appearance. The women had changed drastically since the Homestead. Hair trimmed, breasts stiffened by bras, mouths lipsticked for the camera. Bellanger was a glaring absence. He should have been there. Our organizing principle. The man who’d brought us all together, who’d made us.
Behind me, Deb clapped her hands briskly. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
“It’s so amazing to have all of you in this room together. Three women with such a unique history.”
Deb leapt out ahead of me, answering before Tom’s last syllable had faded. “Unique as it may be, I always remind our fans that we’re just like anybody else. You may be too young to remember the things people were saying when the Girls were first born—”
“I’m familiar with some of it,” Tom said.
“Some predicted that these Girls would bring about the end of civilization. But here we are. I think Dr. Bellanger would be proud of the way these young women have managed to overcome their circumstances…” They were words that had come through Deb’s mouth so many times they were polished to sleekness, purely decorative.