Chapter 17
“L
et’s play a game.” This is John Second, he is Papa’s true son, and he’s looking at Sunny with a smile that makes her want to run away. “Come over here, Sunshine.”
Sunny was going from the chapel, where most people are still listening, to the bathroom, because she has to use the toilet. Mama says Sunny is old enough not to wear diapies anymore, she is a big girl. Too big for games now, not a baby or a little girl, now she can make reports and everything.
“Sunshine,” says John Second. He has a big hand and a long arm that reaches to grab her, but doesn’t grab. Just curls the fingers like a poke, poke, poke. Like they want to poke her. “I said, come here.”
Take a little step, another little step. That’s the sort of steps Sunny does, not into the bathroom to use the toilet, even though her belly’s hurting from having to go. She would run away from John Second, but he would make a report on her, tell Papa how Sunny is disobedient and how she does not listen when told. He would tell Mama, too, and she would look at Sunny with the sad eyes and be sad that Sunny isn’t a good girl.
Not the bathroom, which is far, far away at the end of the hall, but down the other hall and into the bedroom. This is a big, big room, not small like the one Sunny sleeps in with Mama. Sunny’s room has two beds, Mama’s bed and the one underneath that pulls out when it’s time for Sunny to sleep. But this room has a big bed, soft and comfy with the pillows all piled up so high it’s like clouds. Papa’s true son gets to have the big room with the big bed because his vessel needs a nice place so he can sleep good. He sits on the edge of the bed and says to Sunny, “Now, be a good girl and come here. We’re going to play a game.”
Sunny knows games. Like Pick Up Sticks and crosses-and-naughts and now this one, whatever it’s called. John Second puts a finger on top of Sunny’s head. He says, “Spin.”
She does in a circle, his finger pointing down hard in her hair and keeping her in one place.
John Second laughs and sings a song about flowers, that’s what Mama calls posies. And a fire, too, because he says about the ashes, and that’s what fire leaves behind after it’s all burned up. They make a fire sometimes in the yard in the summer to burn the garbage, and sometimes they let the kids poke long sticks into the hot dogs and they eat them all cooked up like that from the fire, but only sometimes, because hot dogs aren’t good for their vessels. Hot dogs are for when they don’t have other food and it’s what the food bank sends.
“Get ready.” John Second hums and hums the song, and when he gets to the end, oh, what a surprise! Instead of falling down, he picks Sunny up, up high, so that she’s afraid her head might hit the ceiling. He’s laughing, and he tosses her down onto that big soft bed like it’s made of clouds, and he falls down, too.
It’s not a very nice game, but John Second has lots of other games to play. Sunny doesn’t like any of them. And one day, when she’s older, he says to her, “Sunny, you come with me now,” and she stands in front of him with her belly all smooth and round and fat even though she’s been put on rationed dinner because she can’t sell all her pamphlets.
And that was Happy.
Happy, her sweetheart. He was working very hard with a ball of soft clay. No, not clay, dough for playing. It was bright red and smelled strange, almost like it would be good to eat, but when Sunny took a surreptitious lick it was all salty. Happy had already rolled out several long strands. Now he braided them together to make a rope of dough. This he circled on the plastic mat, building it up to make a basket.
“Wow, look at that. So clever.” Liesel came in from outside, her cheeks pink, her hair standing on end when she took off her hat. She’d been running, which she said was exercise.
Exercise was good for your vessel. Sunny looked at the clock. An hour had passed, a whole hour, and what had she done that entire time? Nothing but sit on this kitchen chair and watch her son make braids of dough. Peace had fallen asleep in front of the television, her thumb in her mouth, snoring lightly. Sunny shouldn’t let her watch so much TV or suck her thumb, both were bad for her vessel. One would rot her brain, the other her teeth. But somehow she hadn’t managed to even notice the time passing or what her child had been up to while she…what?
While she remembered.
Blinking, Sunny shook her head and bent to pick up the plastic container that Happy had dropped, so she didn’t have to look at Liesel. Liesel might see something on her face and ask her what was wrong. Sunny breathed in, pushing away memories and listening hard with her heart for any sign of a still and silent voice, but finding none. She heard the rush and roar of her blood pounding its ocean-beat in her ears, and when she sat up the world spun a little crazily, but that was all.
“What should we make for dinner?” Liesel asked as though only a couple seconds had passed instead of the eternity it had taken for Sunny to lift the plastic cup to the table.
Maybe that was all the time it had been.
Disoriented, Sunny reached to roll a piece of dough in her palm. More listening, that’s what she needed. They’d been here in her father’s house for only a couple weeks. Already everything they’d lived with their entire lives was managing to fall away. They went to bed and woke up at strange times. Meals were just whenever Liesel served them instead of strictly at seven, noon and five. There was always too much food and things they weren’t used to eating.
“I was thinking pizza,” Liesel said. “Sort of a celebration, what do you think?”
“A celebration?”
“What’s a celebration?” Happy asked.
“It means when you’re excited or happy about something,” Liesel said.
“I’m always Happy.”
Liesel laughed. “Yes, buddy, you are.”
“What are we celebrating?” Sunny squeezed the dough into a circle, poking it with a fingertip.
The poke left a hole. She smoothed it over and pinched off another bit of dough, adding it to the ball in her palm. This piece was white, and where it smooshed together with the red, it made pink. How hard would she have to mix it to make it all red? Or would the white always be there, making the red a lighter shade? How much white would it take to turn this ball white?
Liesel shrugged. “There’s always a reason to celebrate, if you think hard enough. We could celebrate you being here with us. That’s something, isn’t it?”
Sunny looked up. She curled her fingers over the ball of dough, then mashed it back into the container. A couple weeks ago she’d been living with her mother, her family, and she’d known exactly where and how every piece of her life fit against the other.
“It’s nice you like having us here enough to want to celebrate.”
Liesel studied her. She did that sometimes when she thought Sunny couldn’t see her doing it. Sunny was used to people on the outside staring like that, all sideways and squint-eyed. But now Liesel did it right up front and without pretending she wasn’t. That was harder to take, so Sunny looked right back without flinching, cast her face in stone, listened with her heart about how she should react.
“Pizza it is. I’ll order it, have your dad pick it up on the way home. We don’t get delivery out here, but I guess you’re used to that.” Liesel paused. “Do you eat pizza?”
Sunny had eaten pizza lots of times. Fresh dough, tomatoes from the garden, garlic. Lots of cheese. “Yes. It’s good. Thank you, it will be great.”
“You know, Sunny…” Liesel sighed a little bit and gave Happy a look, like maybe she didn’t want to say something in front of him, but did anyway. “It’s okay to say something if you don’t like it. We don’t have to have pizza. We could order subs, or even get burgers or something. Sushi.”
“I don’t know sushi.”
“It’s raw fish with rice. It’s so, so good.”
Sunny recoiled. “That’s silent-room food!”
Liesel chewed her lower lip for a second, then crossed the kitchen to sit at the table next to Sunny. “What’s the silent room? You want to talk about it?”
Sunny most definitely did not want to talk about it, but something in the way Liesel had asked made it clear she wanted to hear about it. Papa had said, “Don’t turn away the seeker.”
“The silent room is where we go when we’ve been too busy being loud to listen with our hearts. It’s a place to be silent, to listen for the still voice inside that counsels us about how to behave.”
“The…silent room. Is it a nice place, then? Like a place where you meditate?”
Sunny shook her head. “No. It’s not a nice place. But it’s a necessary place.”
“And they fed you bad food there.” Liesel’s face looked hard, like maybe she was casting her face in stone, too. Maybe she was trying to listen with her heart.
Sunny nodded. “It helps us to think if we’re hungry. Fasting clears the brain. So you get food, but it’s…well, like you said, sushi.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not sushi,” Liesel muttered. She took some dough from the container and rolled it in her palm the way Sunny had before.
Sunny smiled at that, how even Liesel liked to play with the dough, which was really for children. Happy had made a nice basket, though it was soft and wouldn’t hold anything. Now he’d moved on to other colors, shaping them with the plastic tools that had come in the big bin with all the containers of dough.
“Is that why you’re so careful about tasting everything first?”
Sunny had to think a moment about what Liesel meant, but then understood. “Not because of the silent room. But sometimes the food…it could taste bad.”
She thought about the bowls of oatmeal sprinkled with salt instead of sugar. Milk gone just barely sour, not enough to make you sick but definitely tasting bad. Cold pasta, the noodles orange with congealed powered cheese.
“John Second said the best way to appreciate what you have is to understand what you could have, instead.” Sunny rubbed her palms together to clean them of the tiny scraps of leftover dough.
Liesel made a soft noise from the back of her throat. “And he’s the one who made you go to the silent room?”
Sunny nodded after a hesitation, but looked into Liesel’s eyes. Seekers asked questions because they needed answers. Sunny could not presume to know all the answers, but she could try to find some. “It was his job when Papa died to make sure all of us would be ready when it came time to leave. He fought his own brother for that responsibility and threw him out. He was Papa’s true son.”
Liesel looked blank, an expression Sunny knew well. Then faintly disgusted. “So he made you eat spoiled food or sometimes starved you? To teach you a lesson?”
Sunny shifted in her chair, trying to find the right words that would make Liesel understand. “When Papa died, John Second was all we had. He did what he thought he had to do to make us ready. It was his duty, as the father of the family, to make sure we all did the best we could. My mother said…”
She paused, but Liesel gestured.
“What did your mother say?”
“Mama said when a man loves his family so much he would do anything for them, we should do the same for him. We should obey him, because he knew what he was doing.” Sunny paused again, thinking of the rise and fall of voices behind John Second’s closed door. Her mother had been the only one who ever dared argue with him. “She should’ve been his one true wife.”
“But she wasn’t?”
Sunny shook her head. John Second had wanted a one true wife who could give him sons. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted a one true wife at all.
“Sunny, there’s no silent room here.”
“I know that.”
“I would never put you in a place like that. Never. And anyone who would…”
Liesel’s fierce tone took Sunny aback, until she realized Liesel was not angry with her. Angry…for her? Maybe?
“Nobody got put in the silent room who didn’t deserve it,” Sunny said.
Liesel’s hand closed over hers. “Sunny. Listen to me, and believe me when I tell you, there’s nothing that any of you could have done that would’ve made you deserve something like that.”
Sunny looked at her fingernails, the tips dark with red dough beneath them, and at Liesel’s fingers over top of them. Liesel kept her nails short, too, square, and without the fancy polish Sunny’d seen on so many of the blemished women outside. She looked at Liesel’s face, her nose and cheeks red from running, her hair a mess. Liesel had kind eyes, and the way she was looking at Sunny made her see two things.
One, that Liesel really was angry that someone could’ve put Sunny or anyone else in the silent room. And two, that maybe…well, maybe Liesel was at least a little bit right about it being wrong.
“Well, it’s gone now, anyway,” Sunny said. “Everything is.”
Liesel squeezed her hand. “No. Not everything.”
Chapter 18
T
he folder of paperwork slapped onto Liesel’s desk with the sound of a hand on a cheek, so loud Liesel jumped in her chair and twirled to face the person who’d tossed it down. “Rod! Jeez, you scared me.”
Rod, her boss, looked at her from squinted eyes above plump cheeks gone red with the effort of climbing the stairs. Beads of sweat had pearled in the edge of his butch cut, and as Liesel watched, one slid down his temple toward his jaw.
Amazing. It was freaking freezing in here, and he was sweating. Liesel’s brows rose. “What’s up?”
“Rush job. Some guy needs T-shirts for his kid’s party next week. I told him we could get something made up for him superfast. These are the specs, there’s some graphics stuff in there he’d like to use. Do what you can with it.”
She looked at the folder, notes scribbled in Rod’s atrocious handwriting that he’d expect her not only to decipher, but transcribe. She glanced at the clock. An hour before she was due to leave. Of course.
“I’m working on the price quotes for the Ebling job,” she said evenly without putting a finger on Rod’s folder. To touch it was to commit. “I’m still waiting on a few numbers back from that new vendor. And I have the Wentzel job in the pike, too.”
Rod took a folded white hankie from his back pocket and mopped at his face. “Good. That’s good. But you can take this, too, can’t you? C’mon. You’re my best girl.”
“Funny how you say that all the time except when it’s time to give me a raise.” Liesel didn’t love being called Rod’s best girl. It always meant more work for her. At the same time, she knew it was a compliment, and he was right. She really was the best one on the minuscule design team. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to it today, Rod. I really have to leave on time. I have my husband’s daughter and her kids at home with us, and I don’t want to leave them alone for too long.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You took two weeks off, remember?” He blotted more sweat from his face, but it just kept rolling down.
Liesel looked at the clock again. Five minutes had ticked by while they had this little conversation. She didn’t touch the folder. “Rod, you know I leave at three.”
“What?” His expression clearly showed he did not know, apparently, because he always made sure to bring her work that needed to be rushed just before she left.
“Three o’clock,” Liesel said patiently. “In about forty minutes, I need to get out of here.”
She’d stayed late to help out with last-minute projects so many times that she supposed she couldn’t blame him for looking as if she’d just started spouting off in a different language. It was the curse of being reliable. And talented, she thought, peeking at what she could see in the folder. She could whip up this design in an hour or so, while the same task would take Rod or one of the other guys half a day.
“But…who else will I ask, if you don’t do it?” Rod insisted. “If we don’t get this design finished by the end of today, we won’t have time to run the shirts.”
He gave her a long look. “It’s for a kid’s birthday party, Liesel.”
Liesel sighed and took the folder. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Rod nodded and left her office. When she heard the heavy thud of his feet on the metal stairs outside, Liesel picked up the phone. First she dialed Christopher, but he didn’t answer his cell and she hated going through his secretary. Beth always made her feel like a dunce, like Liesel didn’t know where her own husband was or what he was doing. Like she had to line up to get a piece of his attention. She sent him a quick text instead, asking him to call her. Then she dialed the house phone.
She hadn’t told Sunny not to answer the phone or anything like that, but when it rang four times and went to voice mail, Liesel wondered if the girl would pick up. She might feel uncomfortable answering the phone in a stranger’s house. Or worse…did she even know how to answer the phone?
Liesel shook her head, scoffing. Of course Sunny could answer a phone, for goodness’ sake. Even the Amish, who didn’t allow phones in their houses, surely knew how to use one—no matter how Sunny had been raised, in what strange circumstances, surely she can’t have been so out of touch as that. Liesel disconnected, dialed again, let the phone ring four more times before it switched to voice mail. She wished for the old answering machine they used to have. That at least would’ve let Sunny hear Liesel’s voice leaving a message, so she could either pick up or understand what Liesel was calling about.
No answer.
A small edge of unease pinched at her, but she forced it away. She’d been the one to reassure Christopher that Sunny and the kids would be fine at home, especially after two weeks of settling in. It had been a bit hellish, even though it had gone better than she’d expected. Sure, there were some weird things here and there—his mother had taken the news of her previously unknown granddaughter particularly hard. She’d been on the phone with Christopher almost every day but had claimed to be “too nervous” to speak to Sunny. Not that Sunny would’ve been that great on the phone anyway. But all things considered, the week had passed without anything too out of control.
Her cell phone rang and she snatched it up, thinking it would be Sunny and realizing that was silly. Maybe Christopher. But no, it was Becka.
“Hey, girl, what up?”
Liesel had to laugh at Becka’s heavy-toned slang. “Working. You?”
“Like a mother-effing-dog. Like a DOG.”
They both laughed at that. Becka had quit her full-time job as a psychiatric nurse when Annabelle was born, because she’d said juggling work, child care and the house along with four small kids at home was driving her almost as crazy as the patients. Liesel knew Becka was full of it—she’d taken to staying home with her kids like she’d spent her whole life yearning to be Suzy Homemaker, complete with her own full-size version of the Easy-Bake Oven and Baby-Wets-a-Lot.
“We’re getting a new fridge,” Becka said. “I had to pull this bitch out and clean underneath it. My God, you know what sort of crap ends up under the fridge? You don’t even wanna know. Believe me.”
“What happened to your old fridge?” Liesel glanced at the clock and started typing in orders, glad she could multitask.
“Nothing. But Kent had a boner about getting ice and water through the door, so who am I to deny the man something he wants? And the new fridge, not gonna lie, is sweeeeeet.” Becka drew out the word. “I might make sweet love to it, that’s what I might do.”
Liesel snorted laughter, eyes on the screen, fingers tapping away as fast as she could go. “Um, ew.”
“So…that’s not why I called. I just wanted to check up, make sure everything in Casa de Albright was on track.” Becka paused. “Today’s the first day you left them home by themselves, right?”
“Yes.”
“No frantic phone calls?”
“No. Actually…” Liesel finished off one file and saved it, then opened the next. “I called home to ask Sunny if she could put some chicken in the oven because wouldn’t you know it, Rod needs me to finish up some things here.”
“Why don’t you just order dinner? Save yourself the trouble?”
“I thought about it, believe me. But Sunny’s kind of funny about eating.”
“What do you mean?”
Liesel paused, trying to think about how she could describe it without sounding as if she was a little nutso herself. “They taste everything before they eat it.”
Becka laughed. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“No. I mean…they taste everything before they eat it. Like it’s going to bite them back or something. They don’t like to eat when it’s not the right time. No snacking in between meals—”
“Wish I could get my kids to do that.”
“I know they’re hungry. That’s the thing. They’re hungry but won’t eat unless it’s the right time or the right things. They don’t eat candy. And yes,” Liesel said before her friend could interrupt, “I know that it’s better if they don’t eat candy. But isn’t it what kids do?”
“I know lots of parents don’t let their kids eat candy.”
“It’s not that she doesn’t let them. It’s that she looks at me like I’m insane when I offer them a cookie or, God, even a Fruit Roll-Up. She doesn’t come off as trying to be judgmental, but she is.”
“Most people think they’re right about things, that’s been my experience. And they want to make sure you think they’re right, too.”
Liesel rocked in her chair. “It’s not really that. It’s like she has all these secrets and we’re just not privileged enough to understand them.”
“Ah.”
Liesel sighed. “Yeah.”
“Listen…I was thinking about something. If you think Sunny needs to see someone, I can recommend some great docs who specialize in younger patients.”
It had occurred to Liesel that they all might need some sort of counseling, but honestly, she’d found the prospect so daunting she’d been unable to face it. “You think they need to see a shrink?”
Becka paused. “Yes. I think that it would certainly help them. At least a psychologist, if not someone who has experience in deprogramming.”
Liesel sagged in her chair. Deprogramming, God. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that would probably make sense.”
“How does she seem? Sunny.”
“Quiet. They’re all very quiet. The kids are amazingly well behaved.”
“Compared to my monsters, most kids are.” Becka laughed. “But honey, you know they had to go through a whole lot of stuff you can’t ignore.”
“I know.”
“So if you want me to recommend someone who can just talk to her a little…anytime…I can do that.”
“Thanks, Becka. Shit, I have to get this stuff done. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Fine, fine, I have to finish scrubbing my kitchen floor. So glam, I can’t even stand it.” Becka paused again. “And Liesel, hon, be careful.”
“With what?”
“Just…you don’t know what sorts of things Sunny might do, that’s all. Oh, shit, there’s the doorbell, I bet that’s the delivery guy. Gotta run. Call me.”
Becka hung up before Liesel could say anything else. She ended the call and turned back to her computer, but the screen blurred and she had to blink rapidly to get her eyes to focus. She rubbed them, the clock her enemy.
What sorts of things might Sunny do?
For a second, Liesel imagined coming home to find her house emptied of every valuable, Sunny and the kids gone off on some wild adventure financed by Liesel’s grandmother’s silverware and her wedding ring, the one that had gotten too big and that she kept in her jewelry box on top of her dresser. Guilt instead of unease pinched her this time. She shouldn’t even think of such a thing.
She dialed again. This time, the phone only rang three times. There was a click, then silence.
Then, “Hello, Liesel.”
“Hi, Sunny, it’s—” She broke off with a laugh. “How did you know it was me?”
“The phone told me. I mean, it said it here in this little window. Your name.”
“Oh, caller ID. Of course.” Liesel felt dumb. “How are you doing?”
“We’re fine.”
Liesel waited a beat, but Sunny wasn’t forthcoming with anything else. She cleared her throat. “Listen, hon, I’m really sorry. I know I said I’d be home by four, but it looks like I might not be home until five. I left a couple packages of chicken breasts out to thaw, do you think you could put them in the oven for me? There’s a small box in the pantry labeled Onion Soup, you just put that on top with about a cup of water.”
Sunny hesitated but said, “I’m sure I could.”
“Great. I’m sorry to do this to you on your first day there alone, but I know you don’t like to eat too late. How are the kids?”
“Happy and Peace are playing that game you gave them. Candy Land?” Sunny’s voice had brightened. “Thank you, they like it very much. They want to know if they can have some candy now.”
Liesel chuckled, but ruefully, the conversation with Becka still fresh. “Don’t kids always want candy?”
“We don’t eat it,” Sunny said. “Candy’s very bad for our vessels.”
“Oh.” Liesel bit off her laughter. There it was again, that nonjudgmental judgment. She couldn’t tell if Sunny was assuming she was some wild, rampant sugar fiend, or merely stating a fact. “Well, I’m glad they like the game. And you’re okay?”
It seemed impossible to Liesel that Sunny could be anything like okay. Other than her outburst in Kmart, she’d barely shown any signs of grief. Christopher had said she didn’t even cry when she identified her mother, who’d been buried without anyone attending. Liesel was no expert on mourning, but it seemed a couple weeks was far too short a time to recover from losing everything you’d ever known.
“Liesel, I can put the chicken in the oven. Bliss needs her diaper changed. Is there anything else?”
Her mind had been wandering, but she was called back now by Sunny’s calm voice through the phone line. “Oh…yes. I have some salad fixings in the fridge, and you can pick a vegetable from the freezer to go with dinner. I have potatoes in the pantry, maybe you want to bake some of those?”
“Sure, okay.”
“Sunny, you have my cell phone number, right? In case you need anything.” Liesel didn’t want to hang up without some further reassurance that her stepdaughter was handling things.