Authors: Linda Francis Lee
Ariel stood there a bit longer until Portia glanced over at her. “What?”
“I’ve been at school. All day. I’m a kid.”
“And?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me whether I have homework to do? Or whether I was bullied in gym? Or whether I threw up?”
“You don’t really look like the throw-up type.”
She had her there.
Miranda practically danced into the kitchen.
Portia glanced over her shoulder. “Hey, you.”
Miranda didn’t say a word. She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of VitaminWater, then circled back to lean against the stainless-steel door and sighed, a weird smile on her face.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ariel asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great.”
Portia turned back to the sink. “She’s in love.”
Miranda’s eyes went wide. Then she did an even bigger sigh, tons of dreamy slathered on. It made Ariel want to gag.
“Maybe a little.” She giggled.
Portia kept working on dinner, washing the chicken, putting it in a pot.
“So who is it?” Ariel asked.
“Like you’d know him,” Miranda scoffed.
Portia still didn’t say a word, but then Miranda went off like a racehorse.
“His name is Dustin. He’s the cutest boy in school. Becky says so.”
Uh-oh. Dustin was coming to fruition.
“He’s in my algebra class.” Miranda said. “I hate algebra. Sooooo, I asked him to come over and help me! Not that he’s any better at it than I am, but he’s going to come over.” She glared at Ariel just as Portia walked into the pantry. “No telling Dad,” she hissed. “I told an adult I have someone coming over. I told
her.
” She nodded toward the pantry.
Who would have guessed Miranda was smart enough to come up with a way to win a dare without breaking the letter of the law? Dad’s law, that is.
“Me? Do I look like a snitch?”
Of course Ariel had already thought of several ways she could use this information to her advantage. But she really didn’t tattle.
Portia returned to the sink, and Miranda walked over to stand next to her.
“What are you making?”
What? The girl who hardly ever came out of her room except to barely eat and fight with Dad was making conversation?
“A cross between chicken and rice and chicken soup,” Portia said.
“Cool.”
Cool? Who was this girl? First, a non-adult adult, now a non-glowering teenager?
“My mom never cooked,” Miranda said. “But she loved my dad. And he loved her. A lot.” Miranda’s smiled shifted and changed. “In fact, just because you cook for us doesn’t mean you can take her place.”
“Miranda!” Ariel gasped.
Portia turned her head, didn’t look one bit ruffled. More like she looked determined, like she had been reminded of something totally true.
“Not to worry, Miranda,” she said. “I’m not trying to take her place. I’m just working for your dad. Your mom is your mom, and always will be.”
Hello,
our
mom.
But Ariel didn’t say that, either. She didn’t care to go into Miranda’s story about how their mom and dad brought home the wrong baby when they picked up Ariel, but then the hospital wouldn’t take her back. Sure, Ariel was smart enough to know that this was in no way possible. But Miranda said it with such authority that Ariel was half convinced there was some truth to the story. Maybe just that her parents hadn’t believed someone who looked like Ariel could be their child. Thank God Ariel had their mom’s weird green eyes, so no one could pretend she wasn’t their kid.
Miranda took a carrot and chomped down on it, turning away from Portia so she could glower at Ariel. “She might not have cooked, but she was fun.”
“Mom? Fun?”
The words were out of Ariel’s mouth before she could swallow them back.
Miranda glanced at her. “Of course.” Like Ariel was a moron. “You heard what Uncle Anthony said. She was the life of the party. And she was totally fun when…”
The words trailed off.
Portia glanced over at Miranda, but still didn’t say a word.
“Mom wasn’t fun,” Ariel said, “she was, like, beautiful. Always the perfect clothes and hair, always had her nails done. Totally beautiful.”
Miranda eyed Ariel, seemed on the verge of rolling her eyes, but relented. “She was all that. But she was fun, too. At least she was totally fun before you landed on our doorstep looking like a troll.”
Ariel felt the blood rise in her face. As always in circumstances like this, words eluded her. Her quick brain slowed; her heart hurt.
“Miranda.” This from Portia.
“What?” Miranda snapped back.
“You know what.”
Now Portia was being an adult. She had that steady gaze thing down pat. And Miranda backed down.
“Whatever. Mom was fun even after you arr—”
Another look.
“Fine. After you came home and weren’t a total troll.” She drew a breath. “She really was fun. When you were a baby, she could make you laugh and laugh.”
Ariel’s throat went tight, the same way it did whenever the Shrink asked her to talk about their mom. Then a memory hit her. “I remember a time, once, when Mom dragged me into the backyard to plant violets and watermelon. She laughed and said it would be fun.” The kitchen grew comfortably quiet. Finally, like giving in or something, Portia asked, “Do you have a photo of your mom?”
Miranda shrugged, then pushed up. “I do.” She went upstairs, then returned in a flash. “This is her. It’s the only one I have since Dad packed all the others away. But it’s a great one.”
The photo made Ariel’s throat tighten even more. It showed Miranda, Mom, Dad, and Ariel, all laughing, Mom leaning up against Dad.
But the photo had been taken when Ariel was little. Other than in this picture, she had never seen her mother laugh or lean against Dad.
“You should put it out,” Portia said.
Miranda gave her a look. “Yeah, so Dad can bite my head off? No thanks.”
Ariel explained. “He doesn’t like being reminded of Mom. Which makes it really hard to do the report I’m working on.”
“What report?”
“The one on our family. We have to write a paper on our family tree, without it just being a family tree. I ask, what does that even mean?”
“I had to do one of those when I was in middle school,” Miranda said. “I just asked Mom a bunch of questions. She told me stories about herself as a kid.”
“Really? What did she say?” Ariel asked, the words kind of breathy.
“Not much. I just wrote about her wanting to be a princess when she was young, and how it was special to me since I wanted the same thing when I was her age. I got an A.” Miranda looked at Ariel wryly. “You could hand in the same report, but I don’t think anyone would believe that you ever wanted to be a princess.”
Ariel’s heart twisted even more. Her mom had wanted to be a princess?
Miranda’s cell rang. One glance at the screen and she dashed from the kitchen, then out the front door.
Ariel and Portia watched her go. After a second, Portia poured a glass of coconut water with ice and handed it to Ariel. “I bet you have your own stories to tell about your mom, stories that are completely yours.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a sister, just like you. And I’m a younger sister, just like you. All you have to do is dig around, find the memories. They’ll be there.”
“Dig around?”
“You know, ask questions, search out answers?”
“Like a detective?”
Portia laughed. “Exactly. Ariel, the Twelve-Year-Old Detective.”
“I’m nearly thirteen!”
“All the better.”
Portia turned back to the pile of food on the counter. Ariel took the glass and then headed out of the room to her dad’s office.
She felt a little better. She could look for some memories, like Portia said. She could get her own A, and not with some idiotic story about a princess, either. She would do an Internet search.
In the office, she fired up her dad’s computer, the one that didn’t have any kid blocks. She opened her backpack and rummaged around, looking for a pen and some paper. She really needed to clean out her backpack now. Before she knew it, she’d be thirteen. And, seriously, what self-respecting teenager carried around a calculator covered in stickers; a painted inhaler; or crazy socks with individual toes, like gloves for feet. She had outgrown them all.
But then there was the whole thing she couldn’t get out of her head. Her mom had given her the stickers. Her mom had whipped out the nail polish and painted Einstein on the inhaler after Ariel had refused to carry it around because it was stupid.
And the socks? She’d found those after her mom died, like some sort of weird relic from the past. Her mom had been super fancy. How many times had Ariel wondered how a girl who owned those socks could grow up to be a woman who always wore boring clothes and tons of pearls?
As usual, there were more questions than answers.
Ariel went to Google and typed in her mom’s name. Photos popped up. Ariel had seen them before. After all, she’d Googled her mom a zillion other times. No new photos. No new news, either. Just the same articles, the ones about all the good works Mom did, and all the variations on “Social Scion Dies in Crash.”
Pressure built up behind Ariel’s eyes.
Quickly, she moved on. This time, she typed in the name her uncle had used, Victoria Polanski. The computer spun for a second, and up popped a whole new batch of images. Mom way younger than Ariel had ever seen her. Mom with a group of girls glammed up like that old group the Spice Girls, arms linked, drinks in hand. The caption read:
Beauty Times Four.
The article went on about Mom and a whole bunch of other people attending a big bash at a bar opening in Union Square.
Ariel couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d read that her mother was a vampire. This image, and the one that was lodged in her head, didn’t match. At all.
She kept scrolling down until she came to a photo of her dad. Actually it was of her dad and uncle, standing on either side of her mom. This time, the caption read:
Two Beauties and a Beast.
It said that her mom was a beauty, sure, but it was mainly about how her uncle was the beauty to his older brother’s beast. The thought made her hurt a little bit more.
Quickly, she clicked on another link, anything to distract herself. But what popped up made her flinch. An obituary. She hated obituaries. Avoided them like the plague.
On second glance, she breathed a little easier when she realized it wasn’t for her mother. Instead, it was for a man named Bohater Polanski.
Bohater Polanski?
Ariel scanned the notice. The man was born in Poland; immigrated to the United States when he was a teenager; married, then lost his young wife; was a longtime maintenance engineer at the Amsterdam Houses, the same complex where he raised his only daughter, Wisia “Victoria” Polanski.
Her pulse slowed.
The photo included with the notice showed an old man with no smile but clearly proud of the teenage girl standing next to him, as if it were the only photo of the man to be found. Even Ariel couldn’t deny that the girl was her mother.
With her heart in her throat, she Googled “Amsterdam Houses.”
Ariel stared at the screen. Her la-di-da mother, who refused to socialize with anyone who wasn’t from the “right” family, was raised by a man she had never bothered to mention, in a housing project in an iffy section of the Upper West Side.
That
was the woman who could paint Einstein in lime green nail polish and who owned crazy gloves made for feet.
Sixteen
A
CRASH STARTLED PORTIA
and she dashed out of the Kanes’ kitchen.
“Ariel?”
“Everything’s fine! No need—”
Portia came to a stop in the doorway to what looked like Gabriel’s office. The room had heavier furniture than the study one floor up. Ariel stood at a mahogany desk with a drinking glass at her feet, a spray of coconut water and ice cubes splashed across the floor.
“Ah, clumsy me.” Ariel closed the computer window, then turned off the machine. “I guess I made a mess.”
Portia eyed the computer. “What are you doing?”
“Homework.”
“That didn’t look like homework.”
“Portia, seriously, you’re showing your age. This is how we do homework now. On computers. We do research on the Internet, then write intelligent reports suffused with impressive detail.” Ariel stepped high over the water and drinking glass. “I’ll get some towels.” She walked across the hall and retrieved two hand towels from the half bath. “But don’t worry, I don’t think less of you for not knowing that.” Her smile widened, and she dropped down and mopped up the mess. Portia dropped down next to her, and they had it all cleaned up in seconds.
“Ariel, seriously,” Portia said in a perfect version of a teenage accent, if she said so herself. “Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck?”
Ariel eyed her. “You probably don’t want me to answer that.”
Then she surprised Portia when she leaped up, tossed the towels back in the bath, and grabbed her hand. “I’m starved.”
Portia was still worried about Cordelia. After her announcement about the possible indictment, she had later explained that the authorities had started probing not just the bank, but James as well. James had not left the apartment in days.
Portia’s unease grew when she and Ariel returned to the Kanes’ kitchen and found that Miranda was back, this time with a boy.
Ariel stopped so fast that Portia bumped into her.
“Ariel,” Miranda snapped. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs or something, doing homework?” She eyed Portia. “And aren’t you, like, finished playing maid for the day?”
The boy actually laughed, though he also gave Portia a once-over like a bad imitation of a lech in a seedy bar. He looked older than Miranda, though he wore the same school uniform. His blond hair was shaggy, but somehow seemed professionally cut that way, as if he—or his mom—had paid two hundred dollars for the trim.
“This is your maid?” he asked. “My mom needs to fire whoever finds our housekeepers. Ours are always old and major ugly.”