Chapter 14
Nudging my way into Edith’s house, I was aware of my world order upending again.
Until now I’d only suspected there were houses like this.
Lives like this. Maybe this kind of abode didn’t show up only on home improvement TV, the hosts chirping about rooms that “rose to greet you.” You know, Oprah crap.
Maybe this was the norm somewhere. Narnia came to mind. Wonderland. Magic places. It could all be real. It could be Christmas every day of the year, in a house like Aunt Edith’s.
Sicily’s and Edith’s voices sounded from the back of the house. I paused at an open doorway to marvel at the loaded tree and all its bounty. Plastic tree, though. The scent of pine was coming from a candle labeled “Love & Linger.” If you say so.
I edged into the room to look around. I walked around, petting the supple leather of a chair, the tuft of an embellished throw pillow. Just as grabby as Edith thought I might be, I slid a fingertip down the fabric spine of an old book on the shelf that no one would read.
I was humming, sort of enjoying myself.
Across the room, a spot of blue caught my attention. On a table behind the couch, among a lot of fine-looking doodads, sat a slim vase, and sticking out of it like a quill in a jar of ink, a perfect blue eye. A peacock feather.
I walked over to it, imagining the feather pinned in my hair, the perfect accent to my blue stage dress. I had never seen a peacock feather in real life, had never considered one of them could have any use but to the peacock.
I wanted it.
I ran my fingers along its soft edge.
When I realized I had slid into “She’s Got You,” the Patsy Cline song best suited to envy, I was a little disgusted with myself.
Maybe I had aspirations. If the band ever broke big, I could surround myself with luxury—with things that proved I had money to burn, with softness and comfort. All of it insulation against the black void of my nightmares becoming all too real.
Before I did something stupid, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t Marisa’s house. It was time to get this over with.
They were in the kitchen, Edith saying something in a low voice to Sicily. As I came into the room, she clammed up. Sicily looked up guiltily.
And I wished I’d snapped that feather in half.
“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just casing the joint. If you’re all good here, Sicily, I can find the train—”
“She’s not here,” Sicily said. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she looked miserable, smaller than she had already.
I turned on Edith.
“So where is she?” I asked. It wasn’t even curiosity. This woman knew something she wasn’t telling, and all I wanted was to fan out Edith’s lies like a losing hand of cards. “Was that not your car passing by McPhee’s last night? We both know you know the way to the pub.”
Edith had moved to the counter, where she was steeping tea bags in two mugs, which needed all her attention. I had a feeling neither of those cups was for me. I watched the tea bags dipping, dipping. “Aunt Edie?” I said.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Edith said sharply. “It’s not something I let just anyone—”
“You know I’m not just anyone,” I said.
Edith rolled her lips. “You’re that performer. Alex McPhee’s … friend.”
She said friend like it was a dirty word.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll stop calling you Aunt Edie if you tell Sicily the truth. When did you last see Marisa? Your best pal in the world.”
She sighed and left the tea to the gods. “Last night,” she said.
Sicily’s head snapped in her direction. “I thought you said—”
“I was trying to keep a promise,” Edith said. Her eyes shifted all around. “I was heading home from a showing—”
“Haven’t you shown enough of my neighborhood?” I said. “It’s been shown nearly out of existence.”
Edith ignored me. “I drove past your mother,” she said to Sicily. “On the street. In front of a bar. Of course I stopped, but she said she didn’t need a ride home. That’s all I know.”
“Liar,” I said. I reached past her for one of the mugs of tea and started wandering around the kitchen with it. So many things to break.
“Aunt Edie,” I said. “What’s a place like this run?
Million? Million two? How quickly do the cops arrive at a place like this?
” I blew on the tea to cool it. “Or the media?” I said brightly, as though I’d just had a great idea.
“Pretty fast, right? You ever had one of those satellite trucks parked on this block? Y’all, they take up some space. This one time at McPhee’s—”
“I’m telling the truth,” Edith snapped. She sank back against the counter. “Sis, she didn’t need a ride home, but from there she had a specific destination in mind, and she wouldn’t want me sharing it.”
“She would have told me,” Sicily said. “She was trying to tell me. She called, but I couldn’t hear her with all the…” Sicily backpedaled without looking my way. “It was loud. Where she was.”
“I don’t know how this became such a to-do,” Edie said. “She never called home? She must have been … I should have insisted on driving her home.”
“Call her,” I said.
“What?” Edith said.
“Wouldn’t she pick up the phone if you called her?” I asked. “Since you’re such great friends. Call her. Put Sicily on with her mother so they can have that conversation Marisa was trying to have last night. So Sicily can be reassured and you can be rid of me. Both of you. All of you.”
Sicily had dropped her defensive stance. She was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t name. She turned to Edith. “Please?”
Edith sighed. “It’s ridiculous. If your mother wants to keep something to herself, she should be allowed to.” But Edith was moving toward the next room, toward a phone, I had to assume. Sicily shot me a smile—megawatt, all that youth, health, and dental care on display—and trailed along behind her.
I placed the cup of tea back on the counter before I accidentally dashed it to the floor. I didn’t even like tea.
Now to find a bathroom and wipe my hands on every single one of Edie’s towels.
I FOUND A BATHROOM TOO quickly, and kept exploring. On the stairs to the second floor, my footsteps were muffled by a plush floral carpet runner. I concocted a few excuses as I climbed, but no one was paying the slightest attention to me.
The master bedroom was as lush as I would have predicted. A peacock lived here, after all. A peahen.
In the hallway, a built-in niche held a few framed photos. I paused to shop them for details. Edith had certainly lived a rich life. The photos were filled with smiles and good clothes, wineglasses lifted, pretty dresses at family weddings, scenic views. Live and laugh.
And love. A lot of the snapshots featured Edith, her hair less silver, standing with the same paunchy man in front of all the globe-trotting landmarks: Eiffel Tower, some ruins, the railing of a cruise ship. In every photo, he was turned in her direction, seeking her out.
One of the photos showed Sicily, Marisa, and Edith with their arms around one another, silly faces and smiling big. Sicily, preteen, still in braces. I picked up the frame and peered closer at Marisa.
At some moment in Marisa’s life, she’d turned from a woman gaunt and needle-tracked along the insides of her forearms, from the mother who had failed me, into this woman, sturdy, tanned.
Radiant, with her arm fiercely around a daughter she was willing to raise.
When had that dramatic turn taken place?
Sicily’s birth? Or earlier, early enough to pave the way for Sicily, to lay down the red carpet of welcome. Maybe it had been the very moment she’d dumped me on Alex. Maybe I’d been the stone around her scrawny neck the whole time.
I didn’t want to know anymore. I put the frame back and went back downstairs to the powder room I’d found earlier.
I had already done the necessary and was closing the medicine cabinet after checking out the supplies when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I hadn’t had that shower, hadn’t fixed my hair. I was still wearing what I’d gone to bed in with my leather and fringe over the top.
Well, no wonder. I looked like someone fresh out on bond.
I combed my fingers through my hair, then found in a drawer a little tube of something expensive I could use to scrub my face. A fresh towel and a nicked ponytail holder later, I felt a little more human.
When I opened the door, Sicily was standing there. “Are you singing?”
“No,” I said. Probably. “Did you need the john or…?”
“I just wanted to say, you know, for what you did…”
“Did you talk to Marisa?”
“Edie’s still trying to get through to her,” Sicily said. “But she wouldn’t be trying at all, except you made her. I’m just … uh, really, um…”
“No worries,” I said, keenly aware of the new set of words we were avoiding. If she was anything like me, words of gratitude were some of the hardest to pronounce. “Seems to me Marisa knows how to land on her feet. She probably has nine lives, like a cat.”
“But you’re saying she’s run through a couple of them already,” Sicily said.
She stared off down the hall, biting her lip.
Somewhere in the front of the house, Edith was using a let-me-talk-to-your-manager voice.
Sicily shook her head as though to let go of an idea that had got in, and said, “Let me talk to my mom just a minute, then I’ll take you home. ”
“You can drop me off at the train,” I said. “Or, seriously, I could walk to the station from here.”
We both turned to seek out the window. The snow was coming down, little stinging pellets of ice. Wintery mix, Chicago’s favorite flavor. I couldn’t make Sicily drive me all the way into the city. After seeing her drive on good roads, I didn’t want to see her skills tested on slick ones.
“You could come home with me,” she said. “We have a guest room.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering suddenly how much Marisa had told her husband. Did Sicily have younger siblings? “I think that’s a bad idea. I’m not the kind of surprise you should spring on people you like.”
In the next room, Edith drew a sharp breath.
Sicily turned to me, and, almost in slow motion, whatever she had been about to say dropped away. She pivoted and took off at a full Ugg-boot gallop.
I trailed behind her back to Edith, who sat on the front room’s couch, the peacock feather in its vase poking out behind her. Sicily stood over her.
“What?” Sicily said. “Aunt Edie, what?”
“How could she not be there?” Edith was spitting mad, the real thing. “How? How could you not know where she is? You, of all people?”
And when she looked up, dragonfire in her eyes looking for a place to land, it was me she found.