3
RYDER DIDN’T INVITE me to go to school in the limousine with him and Sam. I waited for the bus at my usual spot in front of Wyndemere and watched as he and Sam were driven off. The windows were tinted, so I didn’t know if either was looking my way. For years, it was like this, even if it was raining. My mother gave me an umbrella, and I stood under an old maple, but in the late fall and winter, with the leaves stripped away, that provided little shelter. Usually, I didn’t have to wait much longer after they had left in the Davenports’ limousine. Ryder had told me his stepmother had mentioned that the one and only time his father suggested I go to school with them.
“She has only to wait another five minutes,” she had said. “We must draw the line between what we give our servants and what we give ourselves.”
My mother would surely call her a Royalist, I thought, and imagined she did, if not to herself, then to Mrs. Marlene.
Today I was more disappointed than ever about not going in the limousine to school, however. But then I thought Ryder might not want to telegraph his plans to his stepmother, which, I’d have to admit, was somewhat shrewd on his part. He didn’t want to give Bea another opportunity to stand in our way by complaining to Dr. Davenport about how Ryder and I were defying her orders every chance we had. My mother probably did know Ryder best of all. Still, despite his cleverness, I couldn’t help but be nervous about what we were planning to do after school.
Once again, the four of us sat at the same table during lunch. I could feel we were the center of attention. All my friends were looking our way and chattering like excited sparrows.
“How big is the attic at Wyndemere?” Alison asked me. “Wyndemere is such a huge mansion.”
Ryder waited for me to answer, but I shook my head. “I don’t remember ever being up there. I don’t even know exactly how you go up there, where the stairs are.”
“It’s about a third as big as the house, like a loft,” Ryder explained. “Some of the things up there go back to before my grandparents owned the place, furniture, armoires full of old bedding and stuff. There’s nothing terribly valuable, as far as I know, except, of course, my mother’s things. But they’re valuable only to my father and me,” he emphasized.
“Maybe there’s some buried treasure,” Paul suggested. “Or a dead body, a skeleton.” He grimaced as if he was telling a story on Halloween.
“Thanks. I’m taking these girls up there. You’re not helpful.”
Paul shrugged and laughed.
“There’s a stairway on the east end of the upstairs, just beyond the last guest bedroom,” Ryder said, more to me than to Alison. “I haven’t been up there that much, either. Almost all the times I went up when I was younger were with your mother.”
“My mother? Why was she up there?”
“I don’t know. She was looking for something or other. There were some old toys she thought I’d like, I guess. I don’t even know whose they were. My father didn’t seem to know when I showed them to him, so they weren’t his. I did go up there with my father a year ago. He didn’t tell me why he was going up. He just invited me to go with him, and when my father invites me to do something with him, I drop everything I’m doing to go.”
“Yeah, when my father invites me to go with him someplace, it’s to help with something, do some work,” Paul said. “I hide.”
Alison laughed, but I wanted Ryder to stay on the subject and tell more.
“Why did Dr. Davenport go up there?” I asked.
“He went through my mother’s things looking for something. That’s how I learned about the dresses.”
“What was he looking for?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Some jewelry, maybe, or some picture. I wasn’t paying all that much attention.”
“It’s nice your father still thinks about her,” Alison said.
I looked at her. I wished I had said it because of the smile Ryder gave her and how he reached for her hand. He behaved as though he thought there was magic in their touch. It brought a glow to his face.
“He’s pretty busy, but when he has a chance to relax and do nothing, I believe that’s all he thinks about,” Ryder told her. “I’m kind of like that with you.”
Alison’s smile deepened. She glanced at me with a look in her eyes that told me, See? He’s clay in my hands to mold.
Ryder paused, a little embarrassed at how he and Alison were behaving as if Paul and I weren’t there, too.
“Okay,” he said, turning back to us. “So we’re set. Paul, did you get your tuxedo?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I gotta buy one of those.”
“You rent it, Paul, with tuxedo shoes. Next time you use a tux will probably be your wedding,” Ryder told him.
Alison laughed. “He’ll probably get married on a baseball mound,” she said.
All the blood in his body seemed to rush into Paul’s face. I actually felt a little sorry for him.
“You own a tuxedo, don’t you, Ryder? You don’t rent one, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, but that’s because of the charity events my father and Bea make me and Sam attend. Paul’s luckier.”
“Well, maybe you should go with him to pick one out and all that comes with it,” I suggested, sounding like I was defending and looking out for Paul, I’m sure. Ryder’s smile widened at how quickly I got concerned.
“You should,” Alison said. “He’s liable to get something with pins and stripes.”
“Huh?” Paul said.
“Well, I guess I will,” Ryder replied. He saluted us both, and Alison and I started to laugh. “We’ve got our marching orders, Paul. This Saturday, we get you fitted. Don’t make any other plans.”
“Yes, sir,” Paul said, saluting, too.
“We’re going to have the best time of anyone at the prom,” Ryder promised. “Dressed like penguins or not, Paul. Of course, the women will be dazzling.”
“They are now,” Paul replied, and Ryder looked surprised at his sharp, clever response, but very happy.
For me, it was as if I had stepped on a cloud.
However, despite Ryder’s assurance that his father not only approved of my using one of his first wife’s gowns but seemed pleased by the idea as well, I was still quite anxious and edgy at the end of the school day. What if he had changed his mind while we were in school, or once we chose a dress and he saw which one it was, he told us to put it back? I’d be devastated, and it might be the cause of a bad argument between Ryder and his father. How would I feel then? What a damper that would put on the prom.
Nothing was as simple as it seemed, especially within the confines of Wyndemere. There were no normal expectations. Mrs. Marlene’s ghosts were always in the shadows, and I was always walking on thin ice.
All my girlfriends, most of whom had been cross-examining me about every detail related to the prom, were surprised when I veered off the path to the school buses and headed for the front of the building, where Parker usually parked to wait for Ryder and Sam. I had said nothing about it, realizing this might be the one and only time I would go home in the limousine. It was painful to explain to them how my mother and I were treated at Wyndemere, painful and difficult, because I didn’t want to blame the doctor for anything, and I certainly didn’t want gossip to get back to Bea Davenport.
Alison, Ryder, and Sam were already waiting at the limousine.
“C’mon,” Ryder urged, holding the door open for me. It felt like some kind of urgent escape.
I slipped in to sit between Alison and Sam. Ryder sat across from us.
“All aboard?” Parker asked.
“And ready for takeoff,” Ryder replied. He took one look at my face and shook his head. “Stop worrying so much, Fern. Follow Bea’s instructions, and never grimace with concern, or you’ll get wrinkles.”
He looked at Alison.
“She even avoids smiling, because she read an article about how it, too, can hasten wrinkles. She cross-examined my father about it at dinner one night.”
“What did he think?” I asked before Alison could.
“He thought it was ridiculous, but whenever he contradicts something she’s read or believes, she tells him he’s too much of a specialist to know. Like a cardiac surgeon wouldn’t have the basic medical education,” he added.
I glanced at Sam. I often wondered how she reacted to Ryder’s criticisms of Bea. After all, she was Sam’s mother. However, Sam, like the two of us, had gotten more attention from my mother than her own when she was an infant. I knew she idolized Ryder and looked up to me as well whenever she could, even now. I thought the fact that she would disobey her mother to spend as much time with either Ryder or me proved where her real loyalties lay.
“I want to go up to the attic, too,” Sam said. “Can I?”
Ryder looked at me for help.
“You’d have to get your mother’s permission first, Sam,” I said.
“Dad didn’t say I could bring you,” Ryder quickly added, “so Fern’s right. Ask your mother.”
“What if she’s not home?” Sam asked, the unhappy thought rearranging her entire face, her eyes narrowing and looking like they were on the verge of flooding with tears, her lips twisting, and the tip of her nose dipping. When something upset her, she was almost a mirror image of her mother.
“If she says yes whenever she is home, I’ll take you up to explore,” Ryder promised.
“I want to go with all of you today. I want to see the dresses, too.”
“Oh, Ryder, why can’t she?” Alison asked. “If it’s that disgusting up there, how can we expect to find anything suitable for a prom now?”
He thought a moment and shrugged. He looked like he would challenge anything and anyone to please Alison. “I guess when you’re already in the doghouse, breaking another rule won’t matter. Okay, Sam, but try not to get dirty and dusty, and don’t tell your mother you were up there unless she asks, okay?”
“Okay,” Sam said, bouncing a little on the seat and smiling at Alison. I wished I had fought harder for her.
When we pulled up to the front of the house, I took a deep breath. I remembered the last time I had entered Wyndemere this way. It was when I was a little more than five and Dr. Davenport had come home just after I had cut myself on a jagged branch. My mother didn’t know I was playing out front. I held my hand up, fascinated with the stream of blood rushing down my palm. I heard him step out of his car and saw him look my way.
“Get over here,” he ordered. I rushed to him. He seized my wrist and held my hand up. “How did you do this?”
I shrugged and looked back at the branch I had been using for a magic wand. He didn’t wait for my explanation. He took out a handkerchief, wrapped it around my hand, and then led me quickly up the steps to the front door. I was afraid my mother would be very angry. I wasn’t even thinking about Bea Davenport, but she seemed to pop out of a wall, her eyes wide.
“Why are you bringing her in this way?” she demanded.
“She cut herself,” he said, and hurried me to the powder room, where he carefully washed my hand, examined the wound, and then reached under the cabinet for a first-aid kit. Even though my cut stung, I was very quiet and more fascinated with how efficiently he worked sterilizing the area and then fixing the Band-Aid. When he was finished, before he did anything else, he washed my blood off the inside of the sink.
“My blood’s red,” I said.
He paused, a slight soft smile on his lips. “And so?”
“I’m not a blue blood.”
It was the first time he had ever laughed at anything I said. It wasn’t a loud laugh; it was simply a widening of his smile and a slight sound that he seemed to want to swallow. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he told me. “Go back and tell your mother what happened, and next time, you be more careful about what you pick up, understand?”
I nodded.
He thought a moment. “Let’s be sure you’ve had your tetanus shot, too,” he added, more to himself than to me.
When he opened the bathroom door, I shot out and ran through the house to our section, more excited about what had happened than I was about Christmas. My mother seemed even more intrigued by it all than I was. She was especially interested in how Bea Davenport had reacted, but I really hadn’t paid much attention to her. I was mesmerized by everything Dr. Davenport said and did.
My mother chastised me for playing in front of the house, more than she did about my getting cut on a broken branch. “You have to stay where you belong,” she told me.
I didn’t fully understand what she meant. To me, when I was little, I belonged everywhere something amused or fascinated me.
I mentioned what Dr. Davenport had said about tetanus, which I pronounced as “tet-us.”
She smiled and said, “He forgot he had set up your appointment with Dr. Bliskin himself. But he’s a very busy man,” she added, which was something she always said practically every time any mention of Dr. Davenport was made.
I relived all this in my mind, from the moment we all stepped out of the limousine to the moment we walked through the grand front entrance of Wyndemere. I couldn’t imagine the doors of heaven being any grander or more impressive.
One of the maids, crossing the hallway to the living room, glanced our way but kept going. I knew that Alison had been here on a few occasions, once or twice for dinner. I didn’t want to cross-examine her or Ryder about how well that went, but I knew how snobby Bea was, of course, and Alison’s family was not wealthy. Her parents would surely not be attending the costly charity affairs Bea helped organize and attended with Dr. Davenport. Alison’s father was a UPS deliveryman, and her mother could take only part-time work because Alison had a ten-year-old brother and a seven-year-old sister. They lived in a modest Queen Anne house in a far poorer neighborhood of Hillsborough, although you couldn’t tell how modest from the way Alison behaved in school.
I saw that regardless of how many times Alison had been here, she was obviously still overwhelmed with the size of Wyndemere and the elaborate decorations, chandeliers, paintings, and rugs. Mrs. Marlene would say, “She looks google-eyed.”
“It’s like walking into a museum every time I come here,” Alison said.
“Well, we do have a mummy,” Ryder quipped in a whisper. I was still holding my breath. “Let’s just go right up,” he said. I held Sam’s hand, and we all headed for the stairway.
We had just started up when we heard Bea Davenport shout, “Samantha! Where do you think you’re going?”
It was impossible to have known if she was home or not. She had her own late-model Mercedes sedan and used it whenever she was unable to have the limousine, but the garage was on the east end of the mansion, and the doors were shut. She had stepped out of the living room and stood there glaring up at us, with her hands on her hips, her posture as erect and stiff as a sentry’s at a military compound. I sensed she had been lying in wait, anticipating that we might permit Sam to go up with us and even that I might be brought home in the limousine.
Sam looked terrified. My heart was thumping, too. She tightened her grip on my hand.
“She’s going up to her room, I imagine,” Ryder said nonchalantly. His casual tone took the air out of Bea Davenport’s swollen face.
“You make sure that you do only that, Samantha. Change your clothes, and come right down here. I want to talk to you,” she said. “And no one else is to go into your room.”
Sam looked like she would cry. I smiled at her, but she lowered her head.
“And, Ryder Davenport, I don’t recall giving permission to have Parker drive anyone else in the limo but you and Samantha,” Bea said.
Ryder stared down at her.
No one spoke; no one breathed. Would she use this as a way to stop us?
“C’mon,” Ryder told us after another silent moment. We continued up the stairs, but I knew from the way she treated my mother that Bea Davenport’s temper tantrum would burst into more of a rage when she was ignored.
As soon as we were out of Bea’s eyesight and hearing, Ryder turned to Sam and said, “I’ll take you up to the attic when she’s not home. I promise.”
It was something, but going up with us was everything. She peeled off to her bedroom, her head down, dressed in disappointment.
“Why is she like that?” Alison asked. When I didn’t answer, she turned to Ryder. “Why is she so angry about your being with Fern? Did you do something that upset her?” she asked me.
“Yes, I was born,” I said dryly.
Apparently, he hadn’t warned her about any of it.
“No. What Fern means to say is my stepmother was born on the wrong side of the bed,” Ryder told her. “Forget her. This way,” he directed, and we walked down the long, somewhat dark corridor to the stairway that led up to the attic.
It was a short stairway with banisters that looked like they were the originals, never reinforced. They were a bit shaky. Unlike the marble stairway, these steps were wood without the benefit of even a thin carpet. Every one of them moaned beneath our feet. There was even less light guiding our way. I had no doubt that Bea Davenport would have little interest in upgrading anything about the attic or in approaching it. Everything in it predated her, and she didn’t want those memories to live in any form.
The dark oak door was wide, however, probably with the anticipation that the attic would be used to store furniture and other sizable things, like the old-fashioned luggage trunks and large cartons of forgettable items people couldn’t bring themselves to throw away. It was the headquarters for hoarders. The door’s hinges squeaked like a sick cat.
Ryder entered first and found the switch that triggered a line of dangling naked light bulbs the length of the attic, at least two of which needed to be replaced. Alison and I paused behind him. It was vast, with no apparent organization of what had been brought up and stored in it. Cartons were scattered among articles of furniture, some covered in dust-laden vinyl. There were standing lamps that looked helplessly inefficient and stacks of bed frames and bedsprings. Since there wasn’t a single window, the air reeked of age itself. Small clouds of dust particles danced around the limited circles of illumination under the light bulbs.
“Ugh,” Alison said. “I can’t imagine finding anything suitable up here.”
“Let’s try. My mother’s things are off to the right here,” Ryder said. Actually, he whispered. It gave me the feeling that he felt something holy and special about his mother’s possessions. It was as if we had entered a cathedral.
Do people live on in the things they once possessed? I wondered. Clothes especially were like part of your body. Maybe that was why when someone died, the people who loved him or her were anxious to give their clothes away. They were too vibrant a reminder, teasing with the flood of images that they could engender. Perhaps their perfume or cologne was still strong. A whiff of that would release memories and visuals, even the sound of a voice, and some memorable words.
What about a strand of hair still clinging to the material with the desperation of someone who refused to be forgotten? Our English teacher, Mr. Madeo, in a lesson about poetry, showed us something called a haiku, a three-line, seventeen-syllable poem that captured an image, a feeling. Right now, one of the ones he had read came right to mind: The piercing chill I feel: my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom, under my heel.
Ryder seemed hesitant. He still hadn’t stepped forward.
“If you don’t want to do this,” I said, “it’s all right. My mother wants to buy me a gown.”
“That’s probably a better idea, now that I see what this is like,” Alison said.
“What? No. Of course not. These clothes cry out to be used,” Ryder insisted. “Everything was quite expensive.” He looked at me. “It’s all right; it’s fine. It’s what my father wants, too. It bothers him that all this is never used.”
“Well, let’s look and get it over with,” Alison said.
Why did she insist on coming? I wondered. What did she think it was like up here, Bergdorf Goodman?
Ryder moved quickly now and paused at a three-door armoire with a full beveled dressing mirror and what I thought were ornately carved side doors.
“This is beautiful,” I said, running my hand over the surface. “Why was it moved up here?”
Ryder blew air through his lips. “Are you kidding? Anything that had the slightest to do with my mother was excommunicated when Bea became the mistress of Wyndemere.”
He opened the center door and stepped back.
“Ladies, welcome to Ryder Davenport’s department store.”
Alison moved to it first and began to sift through the dresses and gowns. I had never gone to a formal party, much less a prom, so I thought I should let her make the decision. She was grimacing and rejecting everything—and quickly, too.
“Out of style. Too gaudy. Too simple. Ugly,” she recited.
I plucked a dress out from under her and held it up. “I like this,” I said. “Couldn’t it work?” It was an A-line, sleeveless, sheer-neck chiffon. I knew it wasn’t really out of style.
She scooped it out of my hands and held it up. “It’s so long,” she said.
I had not told anyone that I had gone on the Internet and studied prom gowns. “It’s supposed to be,” I said. Ryder’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s a brush-train dress.”
“You’ll be swimming in it,” Alison said. “How tall was your mother?” she asked Ryder.
“Five-ten,” he said.
Alison looked at me. “She’s at least five inches shorter, and you know how tall Paul is.”
“I can pick some of that up with shoes.”
“Exactly. You’ll need shoes to match. You might as well—”
“Wait,” Ryder said. “My father told me my mother had a small foot. You might be the same size. We’ll check the armoire that contains her shoes. There’s probably a pair made for this dress.”
“That would really be lucky,” Alison muttered, but she sounded disappointed.
“Serendipity,” Ryder said, more to himself.
I held the dress up in front of me. “Don’t you think the bodice will fit perfectly?”
She nodded, grimacing.
“I might only have to shorten it. I bet I won’t have to take in the waist very much,” I said.
“You can go to Bea’s tailor,” Ryder joked.
“You really do want to give her a heart attack,” I said. “Should we check the shoes?” I was getting very excited now, and Alison was losing her resistance.
He led us to a matching chestnut rotating shoe-rack cabinet. It had three levels, each with three rows of shoes. He pulled open all three, and Alison plucked out the pair that matched the dress.
“Try them on,” she said reluctantly. “They look perfect.”
I gazed around and sat on a black trunk. The two of them hovered over me as I took off my Skechers and then slipped into the right shoe first. It had a two-inch heel. I looked up at Alison. It felt good. I tried on the other, and then I stood.
“Well?” Ryder asked.
“Serendipity,” I said.
He smiled. “My father’s going to love this.”
“Really?”
“You bet. I love it. All I have are pictures of my mother. I’m sure I have one where she’s wearing this dress. It’s in an album my father lets me look at, an album he keeps in his office.”
Neither Alison nor I spoke. Ryder looked away to hide the sadness he felt. It had simply never occurred to me that a child could feel a connection between himself and his dead mother whom he couldn’t really remember or know except through videos and pictures. When he watched a video and heard her voice, it would almost be like watching a famous movie star, maybe, maybe for me; but for Ryder, there was definitely something more, something he knew he had missed and wanted dearly.
He turned back to us, gathering himself together quickly. “What else, Alison?” he asked.
“You should have the dress dry-cleaned for sure and checked for stains.”
“Yeah, sure. What else does she need?”
She looked at me as if to say, A new body and, for sure, a new face. “I’m getting my hair done next Saturday. If you want to do something special for the prom, you have to schedule an appointment somewhere right away,” she told me.
“Okay. I’ll ask my mother.”
“I think she could use a nice pair of earrings,” Alison added. “I don’t think she needs a necklace.”
Ryder thought a moment. “I think my father put all my mother’s jewelry in a bank safety-deposit box. I can ask him.” He smiled. “Maybe Bea will offer you some.”
“With poison on them. No, thanks. My mother has some jewelry, too,” I said. “I’d worry about losing one of your mother’s earrings. I’m sure your mother’s jewelry is way more expensive.”
“Okay,” Ryder said. “Girls, I leave the rest up to you,” he declared.
I folded the dress to carry and changed back to my Skechers. We started out of the attic.
Ryder slipped back for a moment to whisper, “You’re going to look beautiful, Fern, as beautiful as my mother looked.”
“I doubt that,” I said quickly.
“No matter. Paul’s a lucky guy,” he said.
His lips grazed my ear.
The thrill that passed through me woke me in places I never expected.
But I had no idea why it also frightened me.
Bea Davenport seemed to have been waiting at the bottom of the stairway the whole time. Sam was nowhere in sight.
“Hello, Mrs. Davenport,” Alison said as we descended. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello before.”
“Let me see that dress,” she demanded, ignoring her.
I unfolded it and held it up.
“You’ll look absolutely foolish in something like that,” she declared, and then she smiled with ice, as though such a possibility was very pleasing.
I saw Alison nod.
“I’m sure my mother never did,” Ryder countered.
“She’s not your mother,” Bea said.
“No,” Ryder replied. “No one is.”
Bea’s eyes flared, and then she spun around and went into the living room.
“Ouch,” Alison said. “If you weren’t persona non grata before, Fern, you certainly are now.”
“C’mon,” Ryder told her. “I’ll have Parker take you home and go along. You okay, Fern?”
I nodded, but I was still quite frightened. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen or heard Ryder defy his stepmother, but this time, it seemed like a deep slice severing anything that even slightly joined them together as a family. Would I somehow be blamed for that, blamed by Dr. Davenport?
“I’ll call you later,” Alison said, sounding like the reluctant draftee who realized she had to cooperate. “If your mother doesn’t have earrings that work, I might, and maybe I can get you into my hairdresser, too.”
“You two are treating Paul too well,” Ryder joked—or maybe not. I hoped not.
Alison grimaced. “I still think we’d all look better in your family limousine.”
“We’ll be fine. You’ll have another ride in it now. See you later, Fern,” he said, then took her hand, and they walked out to the limousine.
I glanced at the living-room entrance and then hurried through the house to our living quarters. My mother was in the kitchen working on a meat loaf for us. I burst in, undecided about what I should tell her first.
“Here’s the dress Ryder and Alison helped me pick out,” I said, holding it up.
“Alison?”
“Ryder’s girlfriend.”
“Oh, yes.” She took the dress and held it out in front of her. “It’s beautiful. I’ll have Mr. Stark take us to Mrs. Levine after you return from school tomorrow. She’ll do what has to be done. And those are the shoes? They fit you?”
“Perfectly. Ryder calls it serendipity.”
“Does he?” She handed the dress back to me.
“Do you have a pair of earrings that might work with it?” I asked.
“I think I do,” she said. “They’re not real diamonds, but they’re pretty. A young man gave them to me when I was working in New York.”
“You never told me you had a boyfriend in New York,” I said.
“It was weighted too heavily on one side.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He thought he was my boyfriend more than I did, but I couldn’t break his heart and not accept a birthday gift, could I?” she asked, smiling.
“Can I have my hair done for the prom?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know where to go for that,” she said. “Mrs. Marlene, as you know, cuts my hair.”
“Alison’s calling her hairdresser to see if she can get me in.”
“Sounds like you have a good friend,” she said. “If not, we’ll figure something out. That dress will need to be cleaned, you know, but Mrs. Levine will take care of that, too.”
“Thanks, Mummy.”
She turned back to her meat loaf preparations.
“Bea Davenport was quite unhappy about all this, and she and Ryder had some words,” I said. I thought she had better know so she could be prepared for the nastiness that was probably on the horizon.
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
“Maybe Dr. Davenport needs to operate on her heart,” I said.
She started to smile, even laugh, but stopped herself. “Now, don’t you go and fan the flames, Fern Corey,” my mother warned.
“I won’t, but I don’t think anyone really has to fan them. They’ve got their own winds.”
I went to hang up the dress.
After dinner, just as I had begun my homework, Alison called to tell me she had persuaded her hairdresser to work on my hair right after he worked on hers. She made it sound like she’d had to move heaven and earth.
I thanked her as profusely as I could.
“I’ll bring some ideas for the cut and style that he gave me last week. You can look at them tomorrow at school. He’s very good, as you can tell from how he does my hair.”
“Thanks.”
“Is everything all right there?” she asked. I knew what she meant.
“Bea Davenport won’t be any sweeter to me or my mother, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure Ryder will be having a talk with Dr. Davenport, though.”
“Ryder really dislikes her,” Alison said. “He told me some other things about her on the way to my house, things you might not know.”
She was making it clear that she had Ryder’s deep trust and knew more about what went on in the Davenport family than I ever could.
“Probably not.”
Whatever she believed, I still felt that I had shared something with Ryder in the attic that was very special, something neither Alison nor any other girlfriend he might have could share. It was as if we were on a different radio frequency, one not within their reach. I did feel from her tone and the looks she had given me that Alison sensed a bond between Ryder and me, a bond she didn’t understand and didn’t care to understand.
“I often wonder why Dr. Davenport married her,” I said, “but then there’s Sam. She’s a great kid. I love Sam.”
“Maybe that’s how your mother rationalizes you,” she said.
“What?”
“No matter how you came about, she’s pleased with you, isn’t she?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“So? Well, let’s not depress ourselves or talk about this stuff, especially in front of Ryder, and make him unhappy. What about the earrings?”
“My mother has a pair for me.”
“Good,” Alison said. “Thank your lucky stars. You’re going to have a lot of fun, Fern, even with Paul Gabriel. I remember my first prom. I wasn’t crazy about going with Jason Marks, but I practically ignored him and enjoyed myself.”
“You won’t be ignoring Ryder,” I said.
“Of course not. And he won’t be ignoring me,” she added.
“No,” I said. Of course not, I thought, which was why she would have much more fun than I would.
“Anything else I can do for you?” she asked. Whom was she out to impress now?
“No. I’m fine. Thanks, Alison.”
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
After I hung up, I lay back on my bed and looked up at the ceiling, thinking.
Why did she have to say that about my mother? Was that a common thought among people who knew me, knew us?
Everyone, especially people my age, struggled with the question Who am I? There were so many other questions dependent on the answer. Where do I belong? Whom should I be with? What should I try to make of myself?
We fluttered about, twisting and turning, starting down one path and then another, terrified we would make a decision that would ruin the rest of our lives. Maybe we didn’t say so aloud, but I was certain that fear was in everyone’s heart.
Here I was, sixteen, and there were still so many questions, things about my mother I did not know. I was around enough adults to know that most of them enjoyed cherry-picking their pasts to recall and share events that had pleased them, moments they cherished.
My mother seemed afraid to do that. Every time she began, she stopped and retreated to talk about something minor, something that would enable her to forget.
But forget what?
Years from now, would I be like that, too, perhaps with my own daughter?
How would I describe the first prom, the first real date I had gone on? I liked the boy I would dance with enough, but my eyes would be on another, someone in love with someone else, someone he wouldn’t mind remembering. His date would be the same. She would have no trouble talking about her prom.
I would try not to be, but I knew I would be jealous.
Look happy and as beautiful as you can, I told myself, and don’t for a moment appear dissatisfied and ungrateful. Think of it as a coming-out party. You’re emerging from one of the forgotten places in this great house, and you’re going to stir memories that were sleeping too long in the corners. They were memories surely filled with music and laughter.
Bea Davenport might hover like a large, angry cloud over everything in Wyndemere, but a ray of sunshine would drill through and light a path toward resolving the ever-present question, Who am I?
Should I continue on this path?
I must not stop searching for the answer. The only thing slowing me down was my fear of it.