Eleanor blushes. Hard.
I know the look. It’s the look you get when someone says something true, but you don’t want it to be true. Something true that you haven’t admitted is true. Eleanor’s face twists through embarrassment and discomfort into anger and defensiveness.
“That’s insane,” she says. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would you even say something like that? It’s mean.”
“Silly’s right,” Marla says, looking too proud of herself.
“I . . . think Priscilla’s right too,” Astrid says in her smallest voice. A mosquito buzzes against the window screen, and the birds sing outside and wind blows the leaves in the trees. Eleanor looks to Astrid like she’s never seen certain things about her before, and maybe she hasn’t.
Eleanor straightens her shorts so they sit correctly on her waist. She smooths her hair. She runs her hands down the sides of her shirt. And she leaves.
Twenty-Nine
Eleanor does not come back. She calls in the early evening and asks Dad if she can stay over at her friend Jodi’s house, and he says yes. LilyLee’s mom would have made sure to get on the phone with Jodi’s parents to check that everything was okay with them. LilyLee’s dad would have asked a bunch of questions and brought over cookies for her to share with her friend and told her what time he would pick her up in the morning.
Marla passes me a note like we’re in class and not at home. It says, We should tell Dad about the secret boyfriend. We should tell MOM.
I almost say yes, because when I’m angry I want to do something big. But instead I shake my head. Not hard enough probably, because Marla looks like she still might do it.
Dad tells us to order whatever we want. We’ve had so much pizza and Chinese food that we decide to try Indian, even though none of us have ever had it and Dad will probably hate it. He doesn’t like much of anything when it comes to food. When the food arrives, it smells delicious and tastes even better. Dad has a few bites of chicken and asks about our day. I want to ask him, too, about what I saw in the closet, but Marla sits on one side of me and clamps her hand down on my thigh whenever I open my mouth to say anything at all.
“Where’s Eleanor?” Marla says, her voice all fake-innocent and her eyelashes fluttering like a cartoon character.
“With a friend,” Dad says.
“Oh, that boy?” Marla says. Astrid kicks her. Not subtly. Not under the table. Full-on kicks her, in the shins, hard enough that Marla cries out and hugs her leg to her chest.
“A boy?” Dad says. He sounds like a person waking up from a very intense dream who doesn’t quite know what’s going on. “Eleanor is with a girlfriend. She doesn’t know any boys here. None of you do. No boys. Your mom says.”
“She’s not with a boy!” Astrid says. Her voice is desperate, the way it sounded when she fought with Mom about Henry. I remember sitting on the stairs in the Massachusetts house, watching Mom and Astrid battle it out.
“You have to take care of your sisters!” Mom said, yelling so loud I swear the house shook. “You can’t run around with boys! You have to be a good sister. You think you’re so great you can just run off and leave your family to do whatever you want? That’s not how it works.” Then Mom started crying, which she always did during fights. It made them so unfair. “You hate us. You don’t care about us. You’re irresponsible.” This was the worst, when Mom started listing things that seemed irrelevant and strange, a pile of feelings she insisted we felt, interpretations of things we said that she was positive were exactly right. Arguing made it worse.
But Astrid stood up for herself.
“My sisters don’t need me watching their every move. They’re not stupid. They’re not going to wander into the middle of a street or off a cliff! I’m a good sister. I’d never let them get hurt. But what I’m doing isn’t hurting anyone. I love Henry!”
Then the part I never think about happened.
Eleanor was in her room, listening from there. Marla was listening from the basement. But I saw it from the stairs.
Mom pushed Astrid. One hand on each shoulder. One hard slam. I looked away before Astrid hit the wall. I looked away before I could see how bad it hurt.
And because I’m a truly terrible sister, I didn’t say anything about it to anyone.
From the way Dad’s shaking, and the tone of his voice when he tells us not to joke about boys around Mom, I think he remembers it too. I think he saw what I saw, a year ago.
I hate my memories. I hate the person I am, the one who turns away and hides. The one who could save everyone but doesn’t.