A few weeks before I left, I tried to get out of going. I was at Edwina’s for dinner. “Hey, I could live with you for the summer!” I said. I made it sound like an idea that had just come to me, when actually I’d thought about it every night since the ghost started talking.
My grandmother scowled.
“I don’t want to go,” I whined.
But she was having none of it. “Sydney. Stop that. Of course you do,” she said.
Of course I didn’t. The weekend before, Cora and I had gone to her cousin Simon’s baseball game. A cute boy had talked to me by the concession stand and played with my hair, and who knew what else might happen if I stayed for the summer. IT was everywhere, though maybe IT was just more.
“Pleeeease?”
Eye roll.
Because of my mother’s career, and also because Lila wasn’t exactly what you’d call maternal, Edwina pretty much raised me. You probably already know this. She lived with us wherever we went, from our first apartment, to Papa Chesterton’s estate, to the modern house in Topanga Canyon. When I left for Academy in the fifth grade, Edwina came too, sitting beside me on the plane with her purse on her lap so no one would steal it. They chose Academy because Edwina used to live in Seattle when Lila was born, and she liked it there.
I passed their old house often. You picture Lila in Nefarious or in What the Neighbor Knew, and you’d think, No way. Now it was a tiny, crappy rental for university students, with a beat-up couch on the porch and a Huskies blanket covering one window. It was right next to a Wing Zone, which was pretty hilarious. Seeing that house—you understood why she changed her name from Linda Short to Lila Shore. A shore—all that wide space. Solid land on one side, the open sea on the other.
That night at dinner, in the nice craftsman house that Lila bought her, Edwina carried a big platter of ham to the table using pot holders that had seen better days. Ham for the two of us kind of cracked me up. It was probably on sale at Fred Meyer, since Edwina loved a good sale. My friends always liked going to Edwina’s because she cooked big, old-fashioned food, food you barely saw in Seattle, stuff like gravy, like roast, and also because they thought Edwina was colorful. That’s the word people use when someone has a big personality but you’re kind of glad you don’t have to deal with them yourself.
“You’d rather stay here with an old lady than go to that big, fancy place?” Edwina stabbed a slice and slapped it on my plate. I had a brief desire to become a vegetarian, because ham always has a way of reminding you where it came from.
“There’s a new boyfriend,” I said.
Edwina met my eyes, and our gazes played a whole film of the past.
“Well. You never know,” Edwina sighed.
“Jake Something-Italian.”
“She likes those tough guys. The Jets and the Sharks.”
“The Jets and the Sharks?” I laughed. “What are those, made-up gang names?”
“You’re kidding me. West Side Story? You never seen it?” She snapped her fingers, danced toward me like a gang-member grandma getting ready to rumble on a dark street.
“Ooh, scary, haha. Especially in those slippers.”
That’s how it was, you know? Lots of things were funny. I folded a piece of ham into a buttered roll. It was so good. I ate one and then another. I wasn’t in that part of womanhood yet where your body was something you were supposed to keep one nervous eye on all the time, like a bank balance. I still belonged mostly to myself, but not for long.
“She’s all gaga in love,” I said with my mouth full.
Edwina waved her hand as if the new guy were a pesky insect. “That beautiful house right on the ocean? You should’ve seen the Mission District, where I grew up. Six miles from there, but another universe. You’re a lucky girl.”
“All my friends are here.” There was no way I could tell her how great things were getting lately, let alone about that uneasy feeling. The way it felt like the shutter of a camera, briefly opening, revealing a dark and gaping hole.
“Remember how much fun we had when we went to Mexico? It’ll be fine.”
“I was eight.”
We did have fun in Mexico. We had an amazing time. I was a little kid, and I wanted nothing more than to be with Lila. She was the treasure you were only allowed to peek at, until one astonishing day you finally got to run your fingers through the pile of gold coins and try on all the gold jewelry and drink out of the golden goblets. Plus, she made whatever we did exciting. We sat under umbrellas and walked through markets and bought stuff and ate in nice restaurants and spent a lot of time staying out of the sun, even though sun is something Mexico happens to have a lot of. I could never really see her eyes in those sunglasses, but she held my hand and it made me happy.
I didn’t know her as a person then. I knew her as a thing I didn’t have in the way I wanted, though maybe that’s true about most parents.
“Cora’s taking a pastel workshop this summer. She wants me to go too.” A last plea. I wasn’t an amazing artist like Cora, but I loved my pastels—the colored dust on my hands, the way you could disappear into an image you created. “I’d be so busy, I wouldn’t even bother you.”
Edwina ignored me. “How about a haircut before you go? I’ll make an appointment. Your hair is a big wall of blonde.” This was how Edwina showed her love. Feeding you, buying you a six-pack of underwear at Target, watching the way you looked even if you didn’t. Being brisk and bossy and occasionally critical. Sometimes you had to remind yourself it was love.
“I like it how it is.”
“No one likes a big wall of brown.”
I put my hair over my face. “I prefer to call it a waterfall of blonde.” When I peeked through, Edwina was rolling her eyes again.
When you picture Lila Shore in Nefarious or in What the Neighbor Knew or in some article in a magazine, you can’t imagine her growing up in a house like that, but you wouldn’t have imagined me right then either.
I always felt too regular to be hers. I was just me, a girl. I was never beautiful. I was never desired.
And then I was.