Beth sat alone, looking out the window and listening to the boisterous shouts and laughter of the other children. Though she had a thick wool coat and an expensive pair of shoes, a fine wool scarf wound around her neck and matching mittens, she was cold. The damp chill seeped up from her feet and shivered through her body. Her fingertips were numb.
There was no snow outside, but it was still Christmassy. Downtown, the stores were lit up with shopping displays, and the school was decorated with the kids’ drawings. In January, the damp paint-soaked papers would be drooping from the walls, and they’d be sent home with the kids for their parents to put away. Beth would throw hers in the garbage. But today, on the last day of school before Christmas, even the cold chill of the school had felt almost festive.
The dark was setting in, clouds covering what little light the sun gave off before it quickly set. The houses in the neighborhood had their Christmas lights up, the red, green, and blue winking as the bus passed by. Beth sat in silence, watching. None of the other kids spoke to her, which was how she liked it. At the beginning of the school year, two of the older girls had bullied her, calling her “rich girl”—a stupid insult, since there were no poor children at their school. But the older girls were determined to pick on Beth, and eventually there was a fight, and Beth got a bloody nose. The school called her mother, who took over an hour to come and take Beth home. She had smelled like she did after her “day drinks,” as she called them, and she shouted slurred abuse at the teachers, the principal, and the girls in the yard, calling them profane words. No one bullied Beth after that. No one wanted to be her friend, either.
Today there were no Christmas lights on the Greer house, but the windows were lit up, which was a surprise. Often Beth got off the bus to an empty house, which she entered using the key on a chain around her neck. Sometimes one parent or the other was home—rarely both. But it looked like they were both home today, early for them on a Friday afternoon, and even as Beth got off the bus and approached the house, she could tell that something was going on.
The thought didn’t give her any feeling of anticipation. She didn’t expect a party or any holiday cheer. There had been something wrong over the past week. Her grandmother had died, and Beth had heard her parents arguing downstairs late into the night, their voices tight and angry. She’d heard her mother crying, and her father saying, Jesus Christ, Mariana, what a goddamned mess you’ve made. Her mother’s teary, furious answer was: I want to see her. Just once. I want to see her.
Beth didn’t know what that meant. The housekeepers came once a week and the house was as neat as ever, so there was no mess. And her mother could see Beth anytime she wanted.
Looking at the lit-up windows in the lowering dark, she had the feeling she was about to learn what the goddamned mess was.
She walked into the front hall on cold, numb feet. In the living room, the lights and the lamps were on. The curtains were closed. Beth unwound her scarf and walked into the room. Her mother was sitting in one of the orange-upholstered chairs, while her father stood by the window, a drink in his hand, his back to the curtains. As Beth walked into the room, neither parent looked at her.
In the corner of the room was a Christmas tree, a real one, giving off a cold, pungent pine scent. It had been delivered today, set up by someone hired to do so, and it wasn’t yet decorated. There were no gifts beneath it. The tree sat in shadow, out of place and a little sinister.
Sitting on the sofa, the one that matched her mother’s chair, was a girl.
She was a year or two older than Beth, perhaps. She had blond hair, long and straight, combed neatly down her back. She wore a navy blue skirt and a blue and white checked blouse, dark knee socks, black oxfords on her feet. Her hands were folded politely in her lap. She looked at Beth and smiled.
“Hi there,” the girl said.
“Beth.” Her mother turned in her chair, smiling, as if she’d just realized Beth was there. The smile was tenuous, mostly sober but not quite. Mariana had put her hair up, and she wore a string of pearls around her neck. Beth had not seen that string of pearls since the last time her mother had tried to go to church, at Easter. She had put them on with her dress and then gone back to bed and fallen asleep when whatever pill she’d taken that morning kicked in. “Hi there, honey. I’m so glad you’re home. This is your cousin Lillian.”
Beth stared in shock. She didn’t have a cousin Lillian; she didn’t have any cousins at all. Her father was an only child—hence the large inheritance—and her mother had a sister who was dead. Lillian was Beth’s middle name. But she could see no hint of a lie in her mother’s fragile smile, her father’s blank face. She looked back at the girl.
“Hello,” she said obediently.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Lillian said.
“She’s come to stay for Christmas.” This was her mother again, her fingertips rubbing the pearls around her neck. “Isn’t that nice? You’ll have a little playmate. Two sweet, matching girls. The two of you can be friends.”
By the window, her father made a disgusted sound and took a sip of his drink.
“I like dolls,” Lillian said. “Do you like dolls?”
Beth looked at her, and for a long moment nothing else existed. Her parents, with all of their terrible grown-up problems and confusing undercurrents, were gone. The half-lit room in this uneasy house was gone. Even the chill in her feet, in her bones, was gone. There was only her and Lillian.
“I like dolls,” she said.
Lillian slid off the sofa, as if she agreed that the two adults in the room didn’t exist. “Good,” she said. “Let’s play.”
* * *
—
“How old are you?” Beth asked Lillian when they were in her room. Now that they were alone, surrounded by Beth’s actual dolls, the new girl seemed to have lost interest in playing. Instead she looked around Beth’s room, touching the bed and the pillow, looking in her drawers. Beth sat on the edge of the bed, watching in fascination.
“Eight,” Lillian said. Her blond hair was so perfect it shimmered in the gloomy light. She picked up one of Beth’s books—an old Dick and Jane from when she was learning to read, which suddenly made her feel like a baby—and flipped through the pages. “Are all of these things yours?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here by yourself?” Lillian put the book back and picked up a teddy bear, turning it over, pressing her fingers into its neck as if she thought something might be inside. “Don’t you have any friends?”
Beth blinked. She watched Lillian’s pale, elegant hands pressing into her teddy bear’s fur. She couldn’t even be offended at the intrusion; she felt, as Lillian obviously did, like Lillian had a right to be here. “No, I don’t have any friends.”
“Why not?”
“I got beat up at school by bigger girls, and my mother came.”
She didn’t explain the rest of the story, and it seemed that she didn’t need to. Lillian nodded as if she knew what the rest of the story was already. “That’s because you didn’t take care of it yourself,” she said.
“How?” Beth asked.
“You make them afraid of you.” Lillian squeezed the teddy bear’s neck briefly, then put it down. “Then they won’t pick on you anymore. It’s easy. I’ll show you how.”
“No one is afraid of me,” Beth said.
“They will be.” Lillian picked up Beth’s most precious ornament, a jewelry box with a ballerina on the top. “I’m going to help you,” she said matter-of-factly, looking closely at the ballerina. “You’re very lucky.”
Beth swallowed. She had the sudden feeling that Lillian was going to throw the jewelry box to the floor, smash it just because she could. She could almost picture it, the shards of pretty china, the broken ballerina skidding in pieces beneath the bed. She thought it might have something to do with the lesson of making people afraid. But still she didn’t stand up and grab the box away.
“Where did you come from?” Beth asked.
“Nowhere,” Lillian said, still holding the box. “I live with some people who don’t care about me. I don’t live in a nice house like this.” She didn’t sound happy about it.