Scare Crow (23 page)

I headed into my quarters and straight into Bill’s room, afraid of what I would find.
His bed had disappeared, as had everything else. His books, his clothes, his posters,
all of what I had left of him—gone. I made it to the center of the room before sinking
to the carpet. It didn’t even smell of him anymore—just fresh paint and carpet cleaner.
Meatball left my side and sniffed around the room. He found a clean spot against a
built-in bookcase that my mother could sell off, lifted a leg, and left a new s
cent.

I laughed so hard I c
ried.

We left Meatball’s self-appointed room and headed to the opposite side of the sitting
room, where my room
was.

Though empty boxes waited in a corner, my room had been mostly untouched. A few packed
boxes were on the floor marked “For Emily” in black Magic Marker. I wouldn’t have
cared what was inside had I not recognized Maria’s handwriting. I grabbed a side,
pulled, and grinned. It was Bill’s stuff. Of course Maria would never let my mother
get rid of all of Bill’s stuff without saving the stuff that mattered for me: pictures,
yearbooks, old maps, notebooks filled with stupid car draw
ings.

****

When I woke up, it was to a blinding spotlight in my eyes. I had forgotten what it
was like to sleep in a room with windows. I would have gotten up to close the curtains,
but these had already been rem
oved.

My king-size bed was littered with Bill’s stuff. At the time Bill died, people had
real books and shoeboxes filled with pictures and were still using maps—
paper
maps—to find their way. My heart tightened. Bill never got to grow old and see the
world ch
ange.

Meatball was sleeping next to me, so closely that I was about to fall over the edge.
It was as though the dog were afraid of s
pace.

I rolled over the side, stretched, and went to wash up in the bathroom—the “lavatory.”
While I waited for the shower water to warm up, I stood over the sink. It was in these
lavish surroundings that I realized how much I looked like my mother, or at least,
what my mother looked like somewhere under all the plastic. The freckles over the
cheeks and nose that reminded me of the Milky Way. The eyes a shade lighter than seaweed.
The nose that curved at the base. The bony parts around my neck that stuck out under
another cluster of frec
kles.

This would have normally made me cringe and turn away from the mirror’s reflection.
But as I started to undress, letting my clothes fall to my feet, I sm
iled.

My face was rounder now and I had a second chin, as my mother had so subtly pinched
out last night. I let my hands fall to my expanding waist, resting over the little
bump that was pushing out. If it were a girl, would she look like me? If it were a
boy, would he look like Cam
eron?

All of a sudden, I could picture a little girl running with a full head of red hair
splashing behind her. Beautiful freckles dotting little hands, feet wiggling. I turned
my green eyes back to my own reflection, a reflection that would be mirrored in my
child. And I realized how beautiful I
was.

It didn’t take long for Meatball to come find me in the shower. It was one of those
open, privacy-lacking showers. Meatball lapped at the water pooling on the floor,
but stood far enough away so that he wouldn’t have to get wet. I flicked water off
my fingertips into his face to make sure he got wet. This was enough to make him hop
back and around like a b
unny.

I put my bathing suit on under a large terrycloth robe and took him over to the indoor
pool. At least one of us should have fun while we were here. I was about to pull my
robe off when I saw my mother lounging in the corner in her evening dress, dozing
off as she held a glass of orange juice precariously over her chest. While Meatball
sniffed around the edge of the pool, I went over to grab the glass before it smashed
to the gr
ound.

My mother’s eyes snapped open as soon as my fingers touched the g
lass.

“Rough night?” I wondered, though the distinct smell of alcohol that came off her
breath and through her pores and over the rim of her glass told me it was also a rough
mor
ning.

I took a seat on the chair next to her as she steadied herself and tightened back
up her drowsy features. She glared as Meatball paced around the pool. “I don’t want
that thing anywhere near the pool or around my h
ouse.”

“Don’t worry; he’s scared of the water.” Lying was second nature to me under the Sheppards’
roof. So was hostility. “What happened to Darlene and Lan
sing?”

“Who?”

“The chef. The security guard. The people who had been working for you for twenty
y
ears.”

“I had to fire them. Things had been going missing around the house.” She pressed
a finger into her temple as though a headache were throbbing, one that started with
an E and ended with Emily. “How they could rob us after we have been so good to them
over the years? With everything that your father and I have been going through? It’s
inhumane.” My mother’s view on inhumanity was viciously skewed. First-world problems
sk
ewed.

“You mean you fired them on a so-called suspicion of theft so that you wouldn’t have
to give them the exit package they dese
rved?”

Isabelle chortled a laugh. “Did you learn those big words at your half-rate col
lege?”

“I learned enough to know that what you did was wrong. If you and Dad have fallen
on hard times, it’s your fault, not theirs. You should give them the money you owe
them.”

“Your father and I are not on hard times. Please don’t state such things.” She took
a sip of her screwdr
iver.

“Oh? Is that why you’re emptying the east wing? Bill’s room, my room? Or are those
part of the things that have mysteriously gone mis
sing?”

“Those rooms have been empty for a very long time. I decided it was time to clean
house. You’re never here, and William will certainly never be coming
back.”

William
—Bill—
will never be coming back
. She had said this with an edge of humor in her voice. My fists clenched so hard
I actually thought I was going to punch my drunken mo
ther.

Instead, I decided to fight back the only way she knew—with words. “Well, it’s good
to know that you and Dad are doing fine because I need m
oney.”

“Am I to understand that because you want money now, our money is no longer beneath
you?”

“I didn’t say that I
want
your money, Mother. I said I need money. I believe I still have a trust
fund.”

There was a sadistic twinkle in her eye. I had just given her enough ammo to bring
down the barriers I had spent years building to keep her out. But there were things
that needed to be said on both s
ides.

My mother said, “I
need
to get out of this house. I
need
to get out of this country. Your father
needs
his legal problems to go away. Everybody needs something, dearest. It does not mean
they will ge
t it.”

Meatball had been inching his way closer to the edge of the pool, trying to see how
far he could stretch out his neck without falling in. He fell in. My mother swore
like a French sa
ilor.

It was in the shallow end, so his head popped back up right away. He stood on his
hind legs, paddling with his front paws just enough to keep him upright. He stared
at me, shock washed into the fur of his face. It was as though he had forgotten he
could swim. Less than twenty-four hours in my parents’ clasp, and he had already forgotten
what he could normally accomplish on his
own.

I got up and pulled my robe off, revealing a crescent moon bump under my bathing suit.
“I’m expecting, Mother,” I announced calmly and walked over to the pool, jumpin
g in.

I swam over to Meatball, who all of a sudden saw great fun in the fact that I was
in the water with him. I could tell his little tail was wagging by the tremble that
went up his body and made his head shake from side to
side.

“You’re expecting?” my mom said, in a whisper loud enough that I could hear but not
loud enough that the staff could hear. “A
baby?”

“No, I’m expecting a kayak from Amazon.” But the joke was lost on my mother. “Yes,
I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a
baby.”

I tried to lure Meatball out of the pool, but he didn’t want to come out anymore.
I started to dog paddle around him to show him what he used to be able to do. But
he only saw this as an invitation to try to pounce on me. He reminded me of a string-puppet,
swaying from one side to the other, with just his front paws sticking out and daintily
flapping in the w
ater.

My mother sat up. “Anyone I would
know?”

I couldn’t help but snort a laugh at the last hope casing my mother’s voice. Did the
father come from a prominent family? Would I be the one to save the Sheppards, as
she had once done by getting pregnant with me? “No one you know, Mo
ther.”

Like that last bit of soda at the bottom of a cup, my response had sucked every last
smidgeon of hope out of her. She got up, her face turning to s
tone.

“I need access to the money in my trust fund,” I told her before she could escape.
I did need the money. Badly. But more so, I wanted her to admit that things were not
what they seemed. It wasn’t that I wanted to thrive on her misery, as she would mine.
I needed her to admit that she was human—that shit happened, even to her and the prominent
Shepp
ards.

My mother stopped, took a sip, and looked over the rim of her glass but did not look
at me. “You have no trust fund. There is no money. I have nothing for
you.”

And there it was. My parents, who once had more money than anyone should ever be allowed
to have to themselves, were b
roke.

My mother walked to the doors and stopped, keeping her back to me. “It would be best
if you left the house and stayed away. Your father is under enough scrutiny as is.
If the papers get news of this, it will cause irreparable damage to your father’s
already precarious situa
tion.”

The chill of her rejection trickled down from the top of my head, down my neck to
the back of my knees. Meatball must have felt the chill because he stopped the game
and balanced his way to the steps, where he waited, water drip
ping.

It wasn’t as though I had expected my mother to be pleased about becoming a grandmother.
In her synthetic mind, she was still in her twenties, not her fifties. And I certainly
hadn’t expected her to welcome the news of an heirless child with open arms. But this
form of rebuff, disownment of her only child’s child, one who had done nothing wrong
but be born to me, Emily of the Sheppard clan, was a new low for my mo
ther.

I never wanted to hurt her more than I did at this very moment. “Why does Father call
your family dirty?” I wondered with a hiss in my voice before she could fully disappear
into the h
ouse.

She stood gracefully erect, ready to spit fire. “Your father forgets that all money
is dirty. If your father were to look at the story of anyone who has made a fortune
in history, he would find that none have clean hands. The promise of money makes humans
do awful things to each other. My family may have made a quick fortune from the rise
of cocaine and heroin in the seventies, but at least it wasn’t off the backs of slaves
in Ame
rica.”

She left the pool, desertin
g me.

I got out of the pool and towel-dried Meatball an
d me.

My mother was a thief of any joy that could possibly come to me. As a child, I prayed
to a God that I didn’t know, hoping that she would change. Hoping that she would see
me. I never understood why she hated me so
much.

The screwed-up thing was that I loved my mother. I knew I loved her because her unbroken
rejections took small pieces of me every time. Whoever said that it is better to have
loved and lost than to never have loved at all didn’t know my mo
ther.

****

When I got to my room, I went to my bed and started gathering up Bill’s treasures.
The pain that was twisting inside me should have been enough to make me cry. But I
didn’t let myself give in to tears that had already soaked my girlhood pi
llow.

Maria came in, carrying a breakfast tray. She smiled in a way that reaches over and
strokes your c
heek.

I cleared my throat and stretched a brave s
mile.

“Don’t be so hard on your mother,” she told me softly, putting the tray down at the
foot of the bed. “She’s been going through a very difficult
time.”

“You overheard us talking?” I had my back to her, putting my brother’s things back
in the
box.

“I guessed as much when I saw you yesterday. Pregnancy gives women a youthful glow
that no wrinkle cream in the world will ever be able to m
atch.”

Maria kneeled next to me and put her hands over mine, stopping my progress. “You’re
about six months along,
yes?”

I couldn’t look at her, so I nodded over the
box.

There was no hesitation in Maria’s movement. She pulled my shoulders toward her body
and wrapped her arms around me. I was taller and bigger than her (definitely rounder),
but in that moment I felt tiny. I felt like the little girl who used to occupy this
room and wished for the very same thing that was happening t
o me.