“It isn’t fair,” she said as her mother put the last of their things in a paper grocery bag.
“No,” Mia agreed. “It’s not.” Pearl waited for a parental platitude to follow: Life isn’t fair, or Fair doesn’t always mean right. Instead Mia held her close for a moment, kissed her on the side of the head, then handed her the grocery sack. “Go put this in the car.”
When Pearl returned, she found her mother in the kitchen setting a plain manila envelope on the kitchen counter.
“What’s that?” Pearl asked, interested in spite of herself.
“Something for the Richardsons,” Mia said. “A good-bye, I guess.”
“A letter? Can I read it?”
“No. Some photographs.”
“You’re just leaving them here?” Pearl had never known her mother to leave any of her work behind. When they left an apartment, they took everything that was truly theirs with them—and Mia’s photos were the most important. Once, when they hadn’t had enough space in the trunk of the Rabbit, Mia had jettisoned half of her clothing to make room.
“They’re not mine.” Mia took her keys from the counter.
“Who else’s could they be?” Pearl insisted.
“Some pictures,” Mia said, “belong to the person who took them. And some belong to the person inside them. Are you ready?” She flicked off the lights.
Across town, Bebe sat on the curb in the shadow of a parked BMW and watched the McCulloughs’ house across the street. She had been sitting there for some time, and now it was seven thirty, and inside, her daughter must be having her bath. Linda McCullough, she knew, liked to keep to a schedule. “I always find that regular habits make for a calmer life,” she had told Bebe more than once, especially on the days Bebe was late for her visitation. As if, Bebe thought, as if she were just offering her own opinion on the subject, free of judgment, as if she were expressing a preference for apples over pears.
The light in the upstairs bathroom clicked on, and Bebe pictured it: May Ling holding on to the white porcelain edge of the bathtub, one hand stretching to touch the water as it tumbled from the faucet. The street was quiet now, lights glowing softly in the living rooms, an occasional blue flicker from a TV, but when she closed her eyes she could almost hear her daughter laughing as a spray of droplets flecked her face. May Ling had always loved water; even in those hungry days, she had calmed when Bebe had lowered her into the kitchen sink for a bath, and when Bebe had lost the energy even for this—afraid the baby would wriggle from her hands, afraid she might simply lie down on the scuffed linoleum and let the child slip beneath the surface—May Ling had screamed all the more. Mrs. McCullough, she was sure, must have an array of bath products at her disposal: all those lotions and soaps and creams made just for babies, rich with shea butter and almond oil and lavender. They would be lined up along the edge of the tub—no, on a fancy glass rack, safely out of reach of inquisitive little hands—and there would be toys, too, bins of them, not just an old yogurt cup for rinsing her hair, but ducks and wind-up frogs. Dolphins. Boats and airplanes. Miniature versions of the marvelous life May Ling would have with the McCulloughs.
After the bath, Mrs. McCullough would wrap May Ling in a fluffy white towel, so plush that when she unwound it there would be a perfect imprint of a little girl in it, right down to her thumbprint navel. She would brush May Ling’s hair—which was straight when dry but wavy when wet, just like her mother’s—and coax her damp limbs into pajamas. And then she would give May Ling her bottle and put her to bed. Bebe watched the light in the bathroom go out and, in a moment, saw the light at the back of the house—May Ling’s room—go on. May Ling would fall asleep, milk-sated and warm, in that cozy crib, snug under a hand-knit coverlet, a wall of crib bumpers shielding her from the hard slats of the sides. She would fall asleep and Mrs. McCullough would turn on the night-light and close the door, and when she went to bed herself, she would already be looking forward to the morning, when she would come in and find Bebe’s daughter there waiting for her.
Bebe leaned her head against the BMW and waited for the light in her daughter’s room to go out.
Izzy came home from Mia’s to an empty house. Her parents, of course, were still at work, but one of her siblings was usually around. Where was Lexie? she wondered. Where was Moody? Trip, she decided, must be out with Pearl—she hoped she could catch Pearl before her mother arrived home.
As it happened, Trip and Moody had arrived home earlier—Moody right after school, and unexpectedly, Trip a short while later. Trip seemed grumpy and at loose ends, and Moody suspected—correctly—that he’d planned to meet Pearl and something had gone amiss.
“Bad day?” Trip grunted. “She stood you up,” Moody went on, clucking his tongue. “Sucks, man. But I mean, what did you expect.”
“What are you talking about?” Trip said, turning to Moody at last, and Moody felt a mean thrill shoot through him.
“Did you think you were the only one?” he said. “You think anyone’s dumb enough to save themselves for you? I just can’t believe you didn’t catch on sooner.” He laughed, and it was then that Trip dove at him. They hadn’t scrapped like this in years, since they were boys, and with a sudden sense of relief Moody laughed again even as Trip socked him in the stomach and they toppled onto the floor. For a few moments they scuffled on the tile, their shoes leaving streaks on the cabinet doors, and then Trip got Moody into a headlock and the fight was over.
“You shut up,” Trip hissed. “Just shut the fuck up.” Since the first time he’d kissed Pearl, he’d wondered what she saw in him, had wondered if she might—sooner or later—decide she’d made a mistake choosing him. It was as if Moody had somehow peered into his brain and spoken all his fears out loud.
Moody sputtered and pulled at Trip’s arm and Trip, finally, let him go and stormed off. After half an hour of aimless driving, he headed to Dan Simon’s house. In the days before Pearl, he and Dan and some of their hockey teammates had spent hours hunched around Dan’s Nintendo playing GoldenEye, and this afternoon he hoped that video-game haze would distract him from what Moody had said, from wondering if it was true. Moody, meanwhile, headed to Horseshoe Lake, where he thought about all the things he wished he’d said to his brother, today and over all the years.
Izzy, home alone, turned Mia’s words over and over in her head. Sometimes you need to start over from scratch. At five, Mia had not yet arrived to prepare dinner, and an uneasy feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. It only intensified when her mother called at five thirty. “Mia can’t come today,” she said. “I’ll pick up some Chinese food on the way home.” When Moody finally came home, at a little past six, she ran downstairs.