“EITHER HE’S REALLY DEEP, or he’s really weird,” Xander says. I’m lying on the living room couch, she’s perched on the armrest, and we’re dissecting my date. At least, she is. “So he didn’t even act like he wanted to kiss you?”
“I don’t know if he wanted to kiss me, Xander. I’m not a mind reader.”
“There are signals.”
I get so sick of her explaining guys to me, as if they are that complicated. Either they like you or they don’t. It’s not like Paul is a sports car I have to hot-wire.
“Did he look at your lips a lot? Did he lean in? Did he—”
“Oh, spare me!”
“But he did drive you home?”
“No, Xander, he kicked me out of his car and made me walk four miles with a sore back.”
“Wow. What a jerk,” she says, just to get on my nerves.
“He said let’s do this again. So maybe he’ll kiss me later.”
“Or maybe he just wants to be friends.”
Xander can’t handle ambiguity, and I guess if my afternoon with Paul was anything, it was ambiguous. We talked for hours about God, religion, our futures, and then he drove me home. It felt friendly in the car, and breezy. I didn’t feel all knotted up the way I usually am when I’m around a guy I think is cute, maybe because I could see the side of Paul that doesn’t depend on him being attractive. He parked under the big maple tree that shades our lawn. He said, “Let’s do this again.” Then, the feel of his fingertip on my skin, and I got out of the car.
“Well—” I begin. But then I think better of it. I shouldn’t tell Xander anything.
“Well what?”
I sigh. Judging from the way she’s sitting, with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward, staring avidly into my face, there’s no way she’s going to drop this. I may as well give her what she wants, and what she wants is details. “I guess I didn’t give him a chance to kiss me because I got out of the car pretty fast.”
She throws up her hands. “God! Zen! You need girl lessons, I swear to god!”
“But before I got out,” I yell so she’ll shut up, “he touched my arm. Very lightly. Sort of in the crease of my elbow. With one finger.”
She stares at me, deadpan. “That’s so sexy I’m about to climax right here.”
“Shut up. It was nice.” He waited for me to open the front door before he drove off. I liked that, though I know Xander would see this as unimportant. To me, it’s very important. Every guy wants to touch, but not every guy waits to make sure you get in okay. “He wasn’t grabby. So what?”
This seems to satisfy her. “Okay. Good. You’re on track.”
“On track for what?”
“On track for no longer being a hopelessly virginal martial arts geek.”
“Like being a slutty martial arts geek is something to shoot for.”
“You’d be better off, believe me.”
“Whatever.”
She slaps her hands together and rubs them like she’s at a hoedown and the roast pig is ready. “Okay. You wanted to call what’s-his-bucket. So let’s do it.”
Even though I’m lying down, this makes my stomach plunge. “I thought you wanted to go there without calling.”
“I checked in to plane fare, and I can’t find any tickets for less than six hundred dollars.” She picks up the phone from the end table behind her. “Come on. Let’s just do it.”
“It’s too late to call right now.”
“Not in Wisconsin.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“Okay. I will.” She cradles the phone on her shoulder and punches the keys, but just as quickly hangs back up. “I can’t.” She starts chewing on the corner of her fingernail absently, a signal she’s thinking extra hard. She narrows her eyes at the window. “We need a man.”
“That’s what you said last week when you and Margot were making out.”
“Ha-ha.” She sticks the phone in my face. “Call Adam.”
“What the hell for?”
“Adam can pretend to be Mr. Blackstone following up about Mom’s will. About the statue.”
“Call him yourself. I’m not going to be your go-between.”
She glares at me like she wants to belt me as she eases into the red armchair that Mom used to always sit in. The room is dark, but there’s lots of light filtering through the thin curtains. She’s sitting so still, thinking, blue in the moonlight, if I blur my eyes enough, I can almost believe Xander is Mom, like I’m looking at a ghost. And the ghost is terribly sad.
Xander breaks the spell when she clicks on the table lamp at my feet, lifts the phone, and dials Adam’s number. “Hey. It’s me . . . Xander, you asshole. We need your help . . . Well, Zen needs your help . . . Apologize for what? . . . I’m giving you the silent treatment? . . . Fine, Adam, I’m sorry you have the emotional maturity of a zygote. Can you please come help us? Now? . . . Fine. Bye.” She jabs at the phone to turn it off, and throws it into the easy chair across the living room. It bounces onto the floor with a loud crack.
“Hey! If you’re going to throw things, go outside!” Dad calls up from the bowels of the basement.
“I’m glad to hear you haven’t died!” Xander calls back.
“No, I’m just lying here on my side!” Dad calls back.
“I’m starting to think you have no pride!” I yell.
“I know,” he calls. It worries me that he didn’t rhyme. I should go down to check on him, but I don’t have the energy. Dad is going to have to find his own way out of the basement.
Xander goes upstairs and into the bathroom. I hear her splashing water on her face, opening and closing makeup containers. She’s getting ready for Adam, though she’d never admit it, probably not even to herself.
Adam knocks as he opens the front door and steps inside. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. When he sees Xander coming downstairs, he skips a beat before saying, “Hi.”
“Hi,” we both drone.
Xander hands him the phone. “I need you to pretend to be Mr. Blackstone, Mom’s lawyer, and you’re calling Phillips to check that the statue arrived safely. Or something.”
“Or something?”
“Just do it,” she snaps. “You’re good with people. Milk him for information.”
“About what?”
“Find out if he had an affair with Mom,” she whispers so Dad can’t hear, “but don’t seem like you’re trying to find it out.” She hands him the paper with Phillips’s number on it and plunks onto the sofa, barely giving me enough time to move my feet out of the way.
She could get the phone from upstairs and listen to the whole conversation, but she doesn’t, and that’s not like Xander. I realize now that the real reason she got Adam is because she’s scared, just like I am. I don’t even want to hear the guy’s voice.
“Don’t say anything stupid,” Xander says.
“And don’t ask him outright,” I add.
“Make it sound like a business call.”
“Shut up!” Adam shakes his head angrily as he dials, but when the other end clicks on, he’s all professional courtesy. “Hello, is this Mr. Phillips?—Doctor. Sorry. I’m sorry to bother you at home. This is uh, uh . . .” He widens his eyes in horror and looks at Xander, who mouths the word at him. “Bob Blackstone, and I’m calling regarding Marie Vogel’s will? . . . Well, I’m glad we could be of service. . . . Dr. Phillips, I’ve gotten an inquiry from the family about the statue I sent you. It was one of the oldest daughter’s favorites. It would help her to understand why her mother left you the statue if she knew the nature of your relationship?”
Xander gives Adam a thumbs-up.
Adam pauses for a long time, listening. I search his face for some clue about what Phillips is saying, but he’s completely blank. Finally he nods. “I see. So it was purely professional? Because the family has learned the value of the statue and—” Adam winces, and I can hear Phillips’s voice coming through the phone in sharp tones. He’s mad. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize this was such a delicate subject for you,” Adam says innocently, and then Phillips really lets him have it. At one point the yelling is so bad, Adam has to hold the phone away from his ear, and I catch a few words.
“Don’t you know what this could do to that family!”
I look at Xander, who looks at me, her face grave.
“Sir! Sir! You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I have no idea how they found out about it, but I promise you I will do everything I can to—” Adam cuts off, surprised, then clicks the phone off. “He hung up.”
“What did he say?” Xander asks.
“He said she was his student, but when I started pressing him he got really defensive.” His voice is soft as he talks to her, and he’s looking at her with very sad eyes.
“You’re holding something back,” I say to him. His eyes dart to mine, then down to the floor.
“What did he say?” Xander asks again.
“When I mentioned you,” Adam says slowly, tapping his fingertips nervously on his thigh, “the first thing out of his mouth was ‘Her daughters weren’t supposed to know about us.’”
“Us,” Xander repeats, her eyes on mine.
Mom was lying. To us. To Dad, and to me and Xander. She lied. Not just little lies, either. Huge, guilty, black-as-night lies. About who she was, about her life, about everything.
“There’s no dignity in lying” is what she always said to us, with such conviction, her pointy chin jutted out, her eyes fierce. And I knew she was right. As much trouble as Xander and I caused, we never did lie to her. When we were caught, we told the truth and faced the consequences.
Could this really be? Could Mom really have been such a liar? Such a hypocrite? How could she leave behind such a mess? How could she do this to us?