All the Best People Page 4

  Truth be told, Janine doubted she would visit her mother more often even if she had albums full of memories of her. What would be the point? Her mother didn’t know who she was. Solange knew Carole, called her by name, but never Janine. Carole claimed their mother loved them both, yearned for them, but couldn’t connect Janine the baby with Janine the adult. Fine, Janine had said, I know that. But what she could never say to Carole, or to anyone, was that she couldn’t connect Solange, the pleasant, bewildered madwoman, with the longing for a mother she never had. The longing was so pervasive and so real that it was part of her, terrible and familiar, and unrelated to the woman locked up at Underhill, except both were curses she took pains to ignore, or deny. On her best days, when she was her truest self, Janine didn’t have a mother and didn’t need one.

  4

  Alison

  Alison shook Frosted Flakes into a bowl and poured on milk until it brimmed, then added more, drop by drop, until she judged it one drop short of overflowing. She touched her lips to the edge and slurped, watching the islands of crinkly flakes emerge. “Low tide,” she said to no one, and picked up her spoon.

  Her mom came in from the garage wearing the same housedress as yesterday, with a splatter of spaghetti sauce near her waist. Alison was about to point it out—her mom hated stains—when she spoke. “Want to go with me to the store?”

  “The grocery store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure!” Alison scarfed down her cereal and dumped her bowl in the sink. “I’ll get my shoes.”

  Town was three winding miles to the north. The school was on the far side, but during the summer Alison didn’t go into town much. It was too far to walk and her bike was a castoff from her brothers, with a banana seat and ape-hangers that made her feel ridiculous. Plus, the road didn’t offer much of a shoulder. Once a car had come too near and she’d swerved into the gravel, ending up at the bottom of the embankment, her knees and palms skinned and one handlebar bent like a frog’s leg. So she kept to the woods, the river and Delaney’s, when her friend wasn’t with her horse.

  Her mother pulled into the Grand Union lot and parked in the far corner near the Dumpsters. Alison unbuckled her seatbelt and paused. Her mom wasn’t getting out. She had one hand on the keys, still in the ignition, and the other clamped onto the steering wheel.

  “Mom, let’s go.”

  Her mom pressed her lips together and, blinking hard, stared at the Dumpsters.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, let go of the keys and dug in her purse. “You go in without me, Alison, all right?”

  “Why? I don’t want to.”

  Her mom found the shopping list and looked it over. “Get the cheapest unless I wrote down the brand, okay?”

  “I don’t see why we can’t go together.”

  She handed over her wallet. “I’m not feeling well, that’s why.”

  Why hadn’t she stayed home, then? Her mother glanced out her window, then out Alison’s, nervous. Alison twisted around. Mrs. Fischer, who used to live next door but had moved in with her daughter after her husband died, waved from her car.

  Alison was totally confused. “I thought we were going together. I thought that was the point.”

  “Please, Alison.” She gripped the wheel like she expected a tornado to yank her out of the car.

  Alison sighed and opened the door. Before she stepped out, she said, “Can you take me to Burlington this weekend? I haven’t got anything to wear for school.”

  “You’ve got plenty to wear.” Her mother’s voice was nearly a whisper.

  “Please, Mom. Nothing fits.” Alison’s throat shrunk. She hoped she wouldn’t have to say anything else because tears had appeared out of nowhere.

  “School’s not for a while.”

  “It’s next week!”

  Her mom stared at her as if this was actually news. “We’ll see, okay?”

  Alison got out of the car, sniffing back tears, thoughts whirling. “We’ll see” used to be one of her mother’s hopeful phrases but this time it sounded just like “No.” It was as if her mom didn’t want to be with her, which was weird. Alison had always been her mother’s. Her dad had the twins working for him when they weren’t in school and it seemed right: the boys with their father, and she with her mother. Her mom couldn’t be like Mrs. Dalrymple, who made Rice Krispies Treats with her daughter on a school night, took her shopping even if it wasn’t her birthday or a new school year and arranged for Delaney to have father-daughter nights, something Alison couldn’t imagine. Her mom had to work in the garage and do all the washing and cleaning and cooking, and Lester needed extra attention, but she’d spend time with Alison whenever she could. She’d read to her, tell stories and make up rhymes, and let Alison borrow whatever she wanted for dress-up. Her mom wasn’t chatty or outgoing, but she’d always been there, where Alison could find her. Now her mom was somewhere else in her head—in places Alison was not invited.

  Maybe it wasn’t her mom. Maybe Alison was the one changing. She wasn’t a baby anymore. Even the word “child” felt pinched, same as her toes inside her Keds. She hadn’t shot up the way her brothers had, pulled long like Gumby. But something was stirring. She noticed things. She wondered about people, questioning for the first time whether they had to be the way they were. Her mother might seem different because Alison was turning into someone else, someone for whom silly songs and paper dolls were no longer enough. The thought made her sad and confused. Something was slipping away from Alison before she understood what was taking its place.

  And now she was wasting one of the last perfect days of summer buying franks and beans and toilet paper.

  She crossed the parking lot, pulled a cart from the rack and wheeled it into the store. Her mother’s wallet felt awkward in her hand, like a prop. Just get the stuff and get out of here, she told herself. After lunch, Delaney would be back from the stables. Alison tossed two boxes of blueberry Pop-Tarts into the cart—Lester’s one and only breakfast food—and paused at the cookies. Oreos weren’t on the list, but she added a package to the pile. Shopping on your own had its perks.

  Alison lined up at the checkout and was relieved no one she knew was there to see her grocery shopping by herself. She fiddled with the plastic piece you could flip down to make a seat and remembered sitting there when she was little. Well, maybe she didn’t actually remember, but her mother had told her a hundred times about how Alison acted like the cart was her official viewing stand and the customers were her loyal subjects. She’d wave at every single person and give them a smiling nod, her halo of curls bobbing. Everyone told her mom how darling she was. Her mom called her the Red Queen of the Grand Union and called herself the Red Queen’s factotum. Alison had no idea what a factotum was (she’d have to look it up), but one thing was for sure: her mother had adored her.

  She paid for the groceries, checked the change and pushed the cart outside, thinking how she couldn’t wait to turn five, then six, then seven, right up until her eleventh birthday last January. Being older seemed to be the secret to so many things. Time was the wind at her back and she ran headlong in front of it, daring it to race her, or lift her completely off the earth.

  But now, she realized, even if you don’t run, even if you just stand still, things you want and need, maybe the most important things, get left behind. For the first time in Alison’s life, growing up didn’t seem like such a hot idea.

  • • •

  After lunch, Alison crossed the field and sat behind the hedge that blocked the view from the Dalrymples’. She reached into her paper sack and placed everything on the grass beside her: a spiral-bound notebook and pen, a cloth bag filled with marbles and allies, a pack of playing cards, the Oreos and, finally, a shoe box labeled “Suggestions” on five sides.

  Delaney came around the hedge carrying a tote bag and sat cross-legged opposite Al
ison. Around her neck was a gold medal attached to a green ribbon. “Hey.”

  “Hey. How’s Janie?”

  “Oh, she’s good. We practiced alternating canters today.”

  “Neat! What’s in the bag?”

  “Stuff. Show you later.” Delaney pointed at the Oreos. “Where’d you get those?”

  “Made them myself.”

  Delaney laughed. Alison smiled and thought, as she did every day, how great it would be if they could be friends at school, too. She almost asked Delaney if they could this year, but knew that if you had to ask, it wasn’t going to happen. Alison was just Delaney’s summer friend—handy. Mrs. Dalrymple drove Delaney back and forth to the stables every day but refused to drive her to see her friends when, as far as she was concerned, a perfectly good playmate lived right next door. They got along, especially if Delaney got her way. And this summer they’d found a whole new world to explore together.

  Delaney pulled her mother’s scarf out of her bag and spread it between them. A gold sun with a face surrounded by a ring of the zodiac signs. The sun’s rays were made up of different colored jewels, and the black background had stars and moons and planets on it. Delaney said it was really expensive and her mom would kill her if she knew she’d borrowed it, but her mom never wore it so they agreed it didn’t matter.

  “Ready?” Delaney reached for Alison’s hands. “Behold the Capricaries and their infinite powers!” Alison was a Capricorn and Delaney was an Aries, so together they were the Capricaries. Alison only got first billing because they agreed Ariescorns was silly. Besides, Delaney got her entire sun sign in the name, so it worked out.

  They threw their arms in the air. “Behold!”

  “Cool,” Alison said. “Want to start with a spell?”

  “Sure, but I need to tell you something first.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because we’re friends.” Delaney’s serious tone made Alison’s stomach twist up. “Oh, don’t worry.” Delaney sat up very straight and flicked her hair off her shoulder. “It’s perfectly normal at our age.”

  “What? What’s normal?”

  Delaney raised one finger and lowered it until it pointed at Alison’s chest.

  Alison glanced down. “Something on my shirt?”

  “No, silly. Your headlights are showing.” She stared at Alison, her eyebrows raised. “You need a bra.”

  Alison’s face got hot. She pretended her shoelace had come undone.

  “I’d offer you one of mine, but intimates are not for sharing. Just tell your mom. She probably already has some for you. Mine did.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Definitely not. What if Alison had shown up at school with headlights and gotten laughed at? She looked up at her friend. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Sure.”

  They shared some Oreos and discussed what spell they should do. Alison flipped to a new page in the notebook and entered the date. “How about Summon the Familiars? We haven’t tried that one in a while.”

  “Okay.”

  “Last known location and activity?”

  “On the porch chewing a sneaker.”

  “Got it. Sally was in the backyard licking her tummy.”

  “Geez Louise. It’s a whole lot easier being a familiar than a witch.”

  Alison nodded. They each retrieved their familiars’ talismans (an old collar for Mr. Darcy and a catnip mouse for Sally), closed their eyes and thought intensely about their familiars. A fly landed on Alison’s knee and she thought twice before brushing it off in case she had summoned it by mistake. She was about to open her eyes and call it quits when a bark startled her.

  Delaney’s eyes were huge. “He’s inside and can’t get out!”

  They jumped up and ran to the house. As they clambered up the porch, Alison saw a deer leap out of the side garden and realized the dog had probably been barking at it. But she didn’t tell Delaney. They gave Mr. Darcy a biscuit for his magical powers, drank some lemonade and headed outside again.

  “Ready to go under?” Delaney said, lifting the gold medal over her head.

  “Yup. Just gotta write it down.” Under the previous entry she wrote: “Hypnosis. Subject: Alison. Post-hypnotic suggestion:—” She left the rest of the line blank and gave the notebook to her friend. Delaney slipped her hand into the Suggestion Box and pulled out a folded piece of paper. The box was Alison’s idea, too. She worried Delaney would give her an embarrassing post-hypnotic suggestion, so they agreed on thirty possibilities and put them in the box.

  “Get comfy,” Delaney said.

  “I am.”

  “Look at the medal and nothing else.”

  “I am.”

  “Listen to my voice and nothing else.”

  “I am.”

  “Stop saying ‘I am.’” She swung the medal gently back and forth, sitting straight as a yardstick, and stared at Alison. “Soon you will feel sleepy. Very sleepy.” Delaney’s voice was low and even. In the distance, a lawn mower started up and a crow let out a loud caw. “Concentrate on my voice. There is nothing else.”

  Truth was, Alison didn’t need Delaney to go into a trance. She could manage it all on her own by unfocusing all her senses. Lying on her bed, or in the field, or riding along in the car, she’d unhitch her eyes, her ears, her nose, her skin from her mind, one at a time, until she was totally inside herself. She’d first realized what she was doing several months ago after reading about trances in a book, but guessed she’d actually been doing it much longer. Maybe forever.

  Her eyes fixed on the gold disc swaying in front of her, Alison relaxed into the sound of Delaney’s voice without listening to the words. The gold medal, Delaney’s face, the green hedge behind her and the sky beyond squished into the same plane. Warmth spread from her middle out to her limbs. She tingled a little everywhere. She was a feather floating in a glass ball—light, whole, safe.

  Delaney ended the session by calling Alison’s name a few times in a bossy voice. “Welcome back.” She held a pack of cards, but not Alison’s red Bicycle cards. These were larger with a gray, blue and white plaid design.

  “What are those?”

  “Tarot cards. My mom’s friend brought them from New York.”

  “You’re supposed to do what the suggestion says.”

  “I didn’t follow it, okay? But don’t flip your wig. All I did was shuffle them and ask you when to stop.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “’Cause if you’re holding out on me, I won’t let you hypnotize me anymore.”

  Delaney squirmed and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Oh, well, the instructions say the reading has to be about something. I did the first one on the list: Past, Present, Future.”

  “Great. Nothing serious, then. Just my entire life.”

  “Ready?”

  “Wait a sec. Couldn’t we have just done the reading without me being under?”

  “I guess. But doesn’t it seem like it’ll be truer this way?”

  She had a point. “Okay. Lay it on me.”

  Delaney turned over the top card and placed it on the scarf. A guy in medieval clothes carried a hobo stick. The sun was behind him and a little white dog was jumping at his feet. At the bottom it said, “The Fool.”

  “Very funny, Delaney.”

  “Don’t blame me. You chose it.” She read from the instruction booklet. “The Fool is your past. It’s facing you, not reversed, so it means new beginnings and innocence, and that anything can happen.”

  “Makes sense when you’re a kid. What’s it mean if it’s the other way around?”

  “That you’re a crazy idiot. Ready for the next one?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She laid the second card beside the first. A woman in a blue robe sat on
a chair in front of a tree with red fruit on it. One foot rested on a golden moon. “The High Priestess represents wisdom and understanding. Supposedly this is your present.”

  “I guess I’m wise, then.”

  Delaney rolled her eyes and read on. “She guards your subconscious. You’re supposed to listen to your inner voice. Okay, that’s boring. Let’s check out the last one. Your future.”

  Alison stared at the top card. Her mouth was dry and she felt a little dizzy. Her inner voice, the one she’d just been told to trust, told her she didn’t want to know her future. “This is dumb. For all I know you stacked them.”

  “You think I did that?”

  “No.”

  Delaney nodded and slowly lowered the card, turning it face up as she did. A wheel, fiery red, floated in a sky with puffy clouds. There were symbols everywhere. In the four corners, resting on the clouds, were an eagle, an angel, a bull and a lion, but the bull and the lion had wings, too. There was also a snake, a sphinx and a creepy pointy-headed red fox thing.

  “Wheel of Fortune. A very powerful card,” Delaney said.

  “That sounds pretty good.”

  “It can be. It can mean good luck.” Delaney was staring at the ground, picking at a scab on her shin.

  Alison leaned forward and tried to read her friend’s expression. “So that’s my future? Good luck?” But Alison knew as soon as she said it, that wasn’t it. She looked at the card again. She saw it now, what she’d been afraid of all along.

  The Wheel of Fortune was upside down.

  5

  Carole

  Mornings were best. Folks dropping off cars at the garage didn’t dawdle, mindful of keeping their rides waiting. It wasn’t eight yet, and four customers had already come and gone. Walt was outside fixing something or maybe rummaging for parts in the auto graveyard, a sprawling heap of damaged and rusting metal, which on rare occasion gave up a part for a living vehicle. The twins were sleeping and would still be sleeping at noon if Walt didn’t need them, and if Carole allowed it, as she was inclined to do. Once Warren and Lester were up—ducking through doorways, loud on their feet—they filled the rooms, even ones they weren’t in, so unlike Alison, who might appear from nowhere or have been there all along.