Prettiest Doll (10 page)

But it meant I was always in the pretty-girl box, in a velvet hole shaped just like me.

“Sure,” I said.

We played for three hours. I had to work hard to hold the names of the pieces in my head. My favorite was the knight, because of the horse, and also because of the zigzaggy way it moves.

I told Danny I didn't want him letting me win. “I wouldn't do that,” he said, and when I said, “Okay,” he added, “It only means something if you have to work for it,” which made me decide to get serious about memorizing the names of all the pieces and the directions you could move them. Which probably didn't matter that much anyway: Danny said the main thing is strategy.

I had no chance of winning, but I put Danny in check once. “Whoa,” he said, half-laughing. He saved his king easily and beat me in another three moves, but I could tell he was impressed. “You should do this for real. Join a club or something. Does your school have a chess club?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Dale Hickey is more about football and basketball and cheerleading.”

“Not everybody's into sports. What do the kids who don't like sports do?”

“I think there's a Star Wars club,” I said. I didn't tell Danny that I had never thought about asking.

“Wait, let me guess. Star Wars—that's the one you're in,” Danny said. He was looking down, tucking each pawn into its purple softness. I couldn't tell if he was joking in a mean way or just kidding.

“I'm not in any clubs. I don't have time,” I said.

He nodded without looking up.

I wished I could think of something more to say, to mask his disappointment, which was fogging up the silence.

 

Suddenly, the cornfields were gone, mowed down by flat, crowded towns: Bloomington and Joliet, Bolingbrook and Burr Ridge. Our bus slowed, caught in thick, clogged-up traffic. “It's always the same big ugly mess,” Len said loudly, for everyone's benefit. I felt urpy with all the stopping and going.

“It's okay,” Danny said. He touched my hand for a split second before taking his away. “We're almost there, I bet.”

I nodded, my head too heavy to lift off the seatback. It was dark now, and the car headlights on the other side of the freeway streamed toward us, a lit-up river. In the distance, I could just see the skyscrapers—like nothing I'd ever seen in Luthers Bridge—or in Kansas City, even. And then it was hard to tell whether the skip in my heartbeat was because we were almost there, or because he had known I was queasy without my even saying.

In the station, we waited for Len to throw our baggage out of the cargo hold. Ed and Doris were standing near us, talking quietly just to each other. Ed's eyes had saggy, tired bags underneath them. Doris was wearing her Windbreaker across her shoulders like a cape.

Something about them was different from the way it had been this morning: Doris was the one watching for their bags, thanking Len for putting them in the cart she'd somehow gotten hold of. Ed shuffled stiffly beside her as they made their way out to the street. He was tired; he needed her to do everything.

“You kids all right?” Len asked as he handed me my backpack. “You got someone coming for you?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Danny said, slinging his duffel bag over one shoulder. To me, he said, “Come on, Molly. Up that escalator, I think.”

He'd called me Molly so, if anyone reported me missing, Len wouldn't make the connection. I wondered if there was an actual Molly, someone he knew in his real life, or if he just liked the name. “Good strategy,” I said when we were out of earshot, making him smile.

The bus station was huge and brightly lit and full of people, so different from the shabby, almost empty platform in Luthers Bridge. Men and women walked fast in all different directions, following signs to other buses, trains, the street, where I could see taxis lined up at the curb. Lots of people—men and women both—were wearing suits and pulling little briefcases on wheels, like tiny suitcases, behind them. Someone was making staticky announcements over a PA system. An old man in a motorized wheelchair chugged slowly toward the restrooms, holding a shivering Chihuahua on his lap.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Do you have your uncle's address?” Danny asked.

“Seven twenty West Flint Avenue.” I had memorized it from all the letters Uncle Bread had sent me. “It's near a park.”

We found a city map posted on the wall. It took us a few minutes to find West Flint Avenue and more time to find the right train, called the Red Line. I was starting to feel sick again. We thundered out of the tunnel, into the twinkly thick of the night city, and my heart was like a jackhammer splitting pavement in my chest.

 

Even in the dark, I could tell that Uncle Bread's apartment building was four stories tall and made of brick. There was a low iron gate and, behind it, a courtyard. I could just make out the front door under a blue awning at the end. It was bitter cold and the wind rustled in the trees nearby, even though all the leaves had already fallen and lay in gray clumps on the ground.

“What's his apartment number?” Danny asked me, squinting at the row of buttons beneath the intercom to the left of the front door.

“Three ten.”

Danny pushed the button, and I thought,
Maybe he doesn't want to see me, doesn't love me. Maybe that's why he left.

A minute later, I heard Uncle Bread say, “Who is it?” in a tough, mean, city way. My heart beat fast, just hearing his voice.

“Uncle Bread?” I was going to say “It's me,” but before I could get it out, the intercom crackled and Uncle Bread said, “Liv?” in the old voice that I remembered.

“Yes. Me and a friend.”

“Oh, my God.
Jesus.”
Then he said, “Come up. Push the door when you hear the buzzer. Take the elevator to the third floor.”

Inside, the lobby was plain, with a brown-tiled floor and two rows of metal mailboxes just inside the door. The smell was like a mix of the girls' bathroom at Dale Hickey Junior High after the janitor'd cleaned it and the chop suey from the Pagoda Palace on Mound Street. When we got on the elevator, I looked at Danny and whispered, “It smells funny,” and he said, “That's what it smells like when you live next to other people.” He said it like someone who knew everything about the world, who just wasn't going to be surprised, even if that elevator had stopped at the second floor and a dang zebra had gotten on.

But I could tell from the way he kept his eyes on the floor numbers over the doors that it was all an act.

On the third floor, I stepped out into the hall, and before I could say “Hi” or “I missed you so much,” Uncle Bread was holding out his arms and saying, “Oh, my God!” and I couldn't remember if I started crying just then or if I'd been doing it quietly in the elevator the whole ride up and not even knowing.

“It's all right. It's all right,” he whispered into my hair, and I couldn't stop shaking.

Then he picked me up, still hugging, and carried me into the apartment. In the front hall, he put me down and kneeled in front of me. “How's my girl?” he said, and then I started crying again.

“Bless my soul,” he finally said. “What we need is some Kleenex.”

He disappeared for a moment, and I became aware that Danny was still standing out in the hall. “Well, come in. Come
in,”
I whispered loudly, waving him forward with my hand.

“You should introduce me,” Danny whispered back.

“I will. Get in here, though,” I said, irritated that Danny thought maybe there were politeness rules I didn't know.

Uncle Bread came back with the Kleenex. He was still thin, with red hair so pale it was almost pink. He had a half beard covering just his chin and upper lip: that was new. And his face looked older in some way that I couldn't pin down—not wrinkled, exactly, more like paper that had been crumpled into a ball and then smoothed out.

He was wearing green pajama bottoms and a gray Mizzou sweatshirt with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. His bare feet were so white against the blue rug that I thought of clouds in the sky, the thin, wispy kind with no rain in them.

“Are you all right?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he handed me a tissue. “Now blow.”

I wiped my nose and pointed out into the hall. “By the way, this is Danny.”

Uncle Bread turned around and said, “Well, for Lord's sake,” and held the front door even farther open. “Come on in, Danny. I'm so sorry. I didn't even
see
you.”

Danny shuffled in, blushing. I wondered if he was thinking that it sucked to be another person in the same room with two people who already knew each other. Or maybe he thought Uncle Bread didn't see him because of how short he was.

Once Danny was inside, Uncle Bread closed the front door and turned back to us.

“Okay. In the living room
now,”
he commanded. Holding the Kleenex box to his side like a football, he headed through the archway, holding his other hand high over his shoulder and motioning that we were supposed to follow.

The living room walls were the color of a Band-Aid, not white like I was used to, and the floors were shiny, uncarpeted wood. I thought how cold it would be under your feet in the morning and wondered if maybe Uncle Bread was too poor to afford carpeting. But the furniture—two chocolate-colored suede love seats, a coffee table with wrought-iron legs and inlaid blue tiles on the table part, a flat-topped chest, and a metal reading lamp with a shade that looked like the stained glass in church—was unworn and unscuffed. Everything kind of matched, the way rooms in magazine pictures did. The lamp was on and cast low light like a candle.

Uncle Bread sat in the middle of one of the love seats, Danny and I across from him on the other.

“Hey, Uncle Bread, the fireplace is empty. Where are all the gorillas?” I asked.

“I gave most of them away. Olivia, what is going
on?

” “Why did you give them away?”

He looked at me for a long time, thinking it over. “I gave them to a homeless shelter. For the kids,” he finally said.

His answering me meant I had to answer him.

“I left,” I said. “I had to.”

“Why?”

I looked down at the floor, which gleamed like it was wet from a mopping. I wasn't ready to say everything.

“Olivia,” he said again—still a serious teacher, not like the Uncle Bread who called me Jammie because bread and jam went together, “are you hurt? I mean,
hurt.”

“No.”

“Would you tell me if you were?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, what? What happened?”

It was too much to spill. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“Is it those damn pageants?” Uncle Bread asked, and before I could answer, he added, “How could you do this to your mama?”

“She called you?”

“Well, of course she called me. In case you showed up. She's going out of her mind.”

“I left her a note. I told her I was all right, and that I would call her. Sometime. At some point in the, you know, future.”

Uncle Bread folded his arms over his thin stomach and looked sideways out the window, into the blackness. Then he looked back at me. “That crazy old bat is just sick with worrying where you are.”

If anybody else had called her a crazy old bat, I would have said something.

“I know,” I said.

“I've gotta call her, Jammie. I promised I would.”

“Uncle Bread, you can't. It's complicated.”

“Not that complicated.” He looked at Danny. “Is this your boyfriend?” he asked.

“No!” we both said at the same time.

“He's just a friend,” I added. “He's on his way to meet his dad, who's coming back from Iraq. I told him he could stay with us.”

Uncle Bread didn't say anything for a while. He just looked at us, from one to the other.

It is horrible when someone you love knows you're lying.

Horrible.

“Please don't call,” I said.

He looked at us some more.

“If you call, we'll run away again,” I said. “And then no one will know where we are.”

I didn't recognize myself. What was happening to me?

“Three days,” he finally said. “Three days and then I'm calling Jane. And your parents,” he said, looking at Danny. “Three days.”

 

After making us grilled cheese sandwiches, Uncle Bread set one of the love seats up for Danny to sleep on. He brought out blankets and a sheet and a pillow. From the guest bedroom, where I was changing into my pajamas, I heard him asking where Danny was from, how long his mom had been dead, how long his dad had been in the Marines. Every time I heard Danny answer, I cringed a little. Then I heard Danny ask, “Can I call you Mr. Tatum?” and Uncle Bread laughed and said, “How about Fred?” and then something I couldn't hear. And then Danny said, “Danny. Danny's fine.”

A few minutes later, Uncle Bread knocked on my door. When I said, “Yeah,” he poked his head in and said, “You okay?”

By now I was in bed, barely able to keep my eyes open. The bed was made of dark wood and was queen size, which I knew because Imogene has a queen-size bed. It was covered in a white down quilt and was by far the biggest bed I'd ever lain down in, and just the size of it—knowing I could stretch out my arms and legs as far as they'd go and there'd still be bed under them—was enough to make me sleepy. The room was dark except for the light thrown by the bedside lamp, but in a cozy way. The bookshelf full of books made me think of libraries: hushed and safe. I thought,
Duh. Books
on a bookshelf.

Uncle Bread came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay, Liv. No more bullshit. What are you doing here?”

After a minute, I said, “I'm so tired. Can I tell you tomorrow?”