Dream House (16 page)

Her eyes wandered around the piano room—a
real
piano room, with a grand piano that her great-grandfather had played, one of the things that must have made her mother think Lily House was a
house
and not just a house. At Lily House, the piano room was larger and taller and never had to change into something else; here, instead of the kind of bookshelves her father threw together in a cellar, there were built-in shelves that reached almost to the ceiling.

But there was no scent of holiday baking and no dog with a jingle bell on its collar.

Sid returned with his drink but didn't sit down. “Mother and I've been having quite the afternoon; haven't we Mother?” His smile was wrong for the sharp edge of his voice.

“Oh, well,” Ginny's mother said breezily. “So tell me what you've been up to in the big city!” Her smile, too, looked forced.

Sid took a big slug of his drink. “Well, Fran? Are you going to tell her, or am I?” Fran looked at her lap, and Sid turned to Eleanor. “It seems you and Mother have been squirreling away more than just the family
things.
A little history, too.
Secrets.
”

Ginny watched her mother's face go blank and understood that something terrible was coming.

“So, no one wants to talk about where babies come from?” Sid asked. “Okay, then why don't we talk about your favorite topic: the
things.
Mother's a little paranoid that you've been accusing her of stealing,” he said.

Ginny's mother drew her chin back indignantly. “Sid,
really
dear!” she said, glancing at Fran. “This is not the time . . . your mother is . . .”

Sid's face twitched. “A liar? You've got that right.”

As Fran flew out of the tall-backed Washington chair, it rocked like a stiff old man. “You're worthless! Get out!” she yelled.

Ginny's mother jumped up and wedged herself between Fran and Sid. She looked ridiculous, Ginny thought, holding her chin high, as if to make herself taller. Sid and Fran still glared at each other.

“You've gone too far!” Eleanor barked at Fran. “Don't you dare hurt him!”

Ginny watched, incredulous, heart tapping. Saliva collected in her mouth the way it did before she was going to throw up. Sid bent slightly at the waist as though he'd been slugged, turned, and left the room. Ginny heard his loafers scraping up the stairs.

“Go ahead and walk out on me!” Fran shouted after him. “Everyone else does! But you're never getting any of it, if I can help it!”

Ginny closed her eyes and thought: this is what hate sounds like.

The low cabinets behind the piano were filled with toys that she was too old for, but at least in the corner on the floor, she wouldn't have to watch the fight. After coaxing open the sticky cabinet doors,
she pulled out the musty but comfortingly familiar toys: wooden zoo animals and matchstick cars, tiny stuffed bears and pinwheels, fake money and yellowed dice. She turned them over in her hands, her back hunched against the anger that flew around the room.

“How could you!” her mother snarled at Fran. She flopped down on the chair.

“This is none of your goddamn business!” Fran snapped. “I suppose your idea would have been to lie to him about his father for the rest of his life. That's what
you'd
want. Because you just can't stand the idea that I had Bill Holloway and you didn't.”

Ginny closed her eyes, wishing she could squeeze her ears shut to escape her mother's and Fran's dangerous-sounding words. “My-old-friend-Bill Holloway–who-was-shot-down-in-the-war,” her mother often said.

“That's just asinine!” her mother shouted. “You didn't deserve Bill, and you don't deserve his son—you're not fit to be Sid's mother! Who stayed up at night when he was a baby and took care of him when you were . . . were licking your wounds! I did! He should've been
my
son!”

Ginny turned away from them and closed her fist around the pair of elephants, folding deeper into her thick wool coat.

“
Your
son? Because you're such a good mother, you think? Ha! That's a laugh! Your timid girls. You probably make them as miserable as you make me.”

At this, Ginny felt a stabbing urgency to jump up and run out of the house. But she didn't move.

“How dare you!” her mother cried. “You have no idea what it means to work hard . . . You've had your whole life handed to you on a platter—you got the house and the Holloway's . . .
keep-quiet
handouts! You got two years of goddamn college that you
wasted
when you dropped out. That education could have been
mine,
but I didn't
get the chance! Because of you! You wasted it, just like you're wasting your life now. And don't you think I don't know you've stolen things from this house!”

Fran huffed and began to weep. Ginny heard her get up and stomp out of the room. Her mother's footsteps followed.

The shelves of books closed in around Ginny; a blade of orange light sliced through the window, illuminating the cobwebs that clung to the piano's underside. She hunched over the little animals, dividing them into pairs and lining them up, smallest to largest—a miniature Noah's Ark—but her mind was on Sid, whose boots squeaked across the floor toward her. She held her breath.

“Life's just secrets and lies, cousin Ginny,” he said, standing over her. “My own mother's been lying to me all my life. Turns out my father wasn't some asshole who ran off to South America after all. Nope. But the Holloways thought they were too good for us. So they all lied.”

“
Your
mother . . .” Sid went on. Ginny braced herself. “She always told me she loved me, you know. I was her ‘little boy.' But neither of them knows how to love someone; they just know how to lie.” He kicked a giraffe across the room. “Secrets and lies! Well, I have a secret of my own, but it's not going to be a secret for long.”

Heart pounding, Ginny rocketed to her feet and turned to Sid. Fumes from his drink enveloped her. “You're the liar!” she yelled. “You're a messed-up drunk!” Her knees nearly folded under her. Sid's lips quivered, and his eyes were glassy. Ginny backed away from him, nearly falling over the toys.

Her mother stormed into the piano room, expression resolute, body stiff. “Put the toys away, Ginny. We're going.”

Jangling with fear that her mother had heard the nasty words she'd shouted at Sid, Ginny stuffed the toys into the cabinet. She followed her mother out to the entry hall where Fran stood looking
lifeless as a statue, holding a Christmas present.

“We're family, you know!” her mother snapped.

Stone faced, Fran held the present out to Ginny, and Ginny reached for it.

“Certainly
not
!” Eleanor snarled, snatched the gift and dropped it on the hall table.

When Eleanor had turned her back, though, Fran took the present and quickly stuffed it into Ginny's game bag. Ginny looked back at Sid.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You're all experts at being cruel. I can't wait to get the hell out of here. This is one sick family. You all deserve each other.” He looked at his mother, then at Eleanor, then straight at Ginny.

Shaking, Ginny slinked out the door behind her mother, one hand pressing the present deeper into her bag.

In the car, Eleanor announced, “I guess I won't be asking them to dinner after all. She's just lost her mind.”

Ginny started to cry.

Her mother said, “Oh, it's not worth getting upset about.”

But it was; Ginny could see the tears in her mother's eyes, and she herself had never in her life felt so sick when she wasn't actually sick.

“If she thinks she can stay in Lily House till her dying day, she's got another think coming,” her mother snapped. “She just grabbed that house, like she grabs everything.”

“My stomach hurts,” Ginny said.

They passed Tobey's Market. “We'll get you some ginger ale when we get home.”

Back at the house, Ginny ran upstairs to her room and pulled
the present from her bag. Fran had given her little things every Christmas and in the car Ginny had schemed that she'd open the gift immediately, throw away the wrapping, and never mention it to her mother. But the tag on the package said “For Eleanor.” She panicked. She couldn't throw away someone else's gift, but her mother would be furious if she knew Ginny had accepted it. She'd have to hide it until Christmas day when, surely, her mother would no longer be angry.

The Christmas tree stood waiting in the living room. Her father had brought it inside the night before, and its fragrance had begun to overpower the aroma of Mr. Ruby's sweets. The box of ornaments sat on the floor near the front door, next to a mound of green light strands. Every time Ginny walked by them, she thought of Cassie and wondered if she would be home in time to decorate the tree with them. She hadn't heard Cassie's name since the phone call with her mother.

On Sunday, Mr. Ruby started packing things up. Ginny felt a little sad that he wouldn't be coming anymore, but at least maybe her mother would cheer up. She sat on the steps and watched Mr. Ruby and her father carefully packing up the baked goods and folding the white tablecloths. As they unclamped the floodlights from their stands and coiled extension cords, they shared stories about their customers. Her father had to work all weekend, but it seemed to Ginny that he and Mr. Ruby had been enjoying themselves. And, she hadn't had to practice for days.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Mr. Ruby finally loaded the last box into his van. He came back to the house carrying a large, flat, red box and called out for Ginny and her mother. When the family had congregated at the front door, he handed the box to Eleanor.

Smiling and tipping his hat, he said, “Thank you, Eleanor, for your patience and most generous hospitality. Merry Christmas!” Then he was gone.

The night was still and cold enough that icicles had formed at the
corner of the porch roof. When Mr. Ruby's taillights had disappeared from the driveway, Ron lifted the top of the box. The three of them peered into it at a dazzling heap of Christmas cookies—stars frosted in green and red and white, blinking like little neon signs. Ginny's mouth watered at the thought of their creamy sweetness.

“Well,” Ginny's father chuckled, “I'm almost sorry to see him go. He's kind of a fun fellow.” Smiling, he turned to her mother. “Why don't we decorate the tree now? Where's Cassie? Wasn't she supposed to come home tonight?”

Her mother looked up at him with eyes flat and gray like beach stones. Stepping out onto the porch, she raised the box of cookies over her head, leaned forward and heaved them into the night. Then she snatched the ornament box from the floor and flung its contents out with the cookies. Green and red balls, miniature sleighs, and Santa mice rained down, hit the crusty surface of the snow and slid a little before coming to rest. Glowing white under the porch light, the yard became celestial, constellations of cookie stars scattered below a black starless sky. Ginny's world turned upside down.

Her father stood at the bottom of the stairs staring at his feet. A minute later, he trudged upstairs where her mother had fled.

“Don't ‘honey' me!” Ginny heard her mother yell. “If you and Cassie don't care about Christmas, maybe we just won't
have
Christmas this year!” The bedroom door slammed.

Ginny sat in the living room with the blank Christmas tree. She and the tree seemed to belong together at that moment, robbed of all Christmas spirit, sentenced to wait and wonder: was it possible to just
not have
Christmas?

A storm raged in her head. She couldn't fix the fact that Mr. Ruby had stayed too long in the piano room or what had happened at Lily House, but it dawned on her that she and Cassie could salvage Christmas.

She raced from the room, tripping over the dog sprawled across the kitchen threshold. In the darkroom, she flipped on the light and went to her father's worktable. Where was the phone? She pushed aside wrapped presents, the pile of Christmas cards waiting to be mailed, lightbulbs, boxes of film, and two large bags of glazed donuts. When she'd unearthed the phone, she hunted some more and found the message pad where her mother had jotted down Cassie's friend's number.

Her body throbbed. Never before had she stepped onto the tightrope that stretched between her mother and Cassie, or so boldly asked Cassie to suspend her sense of fairness in order to give something up for her, Ginny. She picked up the phone and dialed.

“It's just one more day,” Cassie said when Ginny asked her to come home.

“One more day's too late!” Ginny whispered. “You have to come tomorrow. Mom's really, really sad. And this thing happened today. A big fight at Lily House. Sid was there and . . . something about Bill Holloway. It sounded like he was Sid's father. I think Mom
lied
to us about Sid's father being some guy who ran away.” Ginny didn't really care whose son Sid was; she wanted to tell Cassie what had scared her most, which was the sound of her own voice yelling mean things at Sid. But she didn't dare.