Lily looked up at him with wide, sweet eyes. “Yes, Mr. Greer,” she said.
Beth followed Lily upstairs to pack. She felt like crying, but Lily was unperturbed. She didn’t even seem concerned that she was being sent out into the world, into a taxi, alone, at age eight. Beth didn’t want to cry in front of her, didn’t want to seem like a baby.
“Will you come back?” she asked as Lily slung her single cloth bag, filled with only a few clothes and a toothbrush, over her shoulder.
“Yes,” Lily said. “They can’t keep me from this house. No one can.”
* * *
—
Over dinner one night a week later, Beth asked her mother and father who Lily’s parents were.
Mariana glanced at Julian, then looked back at Beth. “I’m glad you two are such good friends,” she said, touching Beth’s hair. “And Lily doesn’t have parents. Isn’t that sad?”
“Everyone has parents,” Beth said. “Kids don’t come from storks. I know that now.”
“Well, no, she didn’t come from a stork,” Mariana said, picking up her fork and studying the silver tines. “Goodness. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to about babies. I’ll have to call the school and ask what they’re teaching these days. I meant that Lillian’s parents are dead.”
“But who are they?” Beth said. “Did you know them? Is that why she came to visit?”
Mariana looked uncertain. “Yes,” she said. “I knew them. Lillian’s mother was a friend of mine, but she’s dead now, and I feel bad for that little girl. She’s practically your cousin. Okay?”
At the other side of the table, Beth’s father put his fork down and pushed his chair back. He walked out of the dining room without a word.
Beth knew her mother was lying to her, because Lily had said that her mother wasn’t dead at all. Her father knew she was lying, too.
But Mariana pretended that nothing was wrong, even though everything was wrong, just like she always did. “He’s just angry,” she said of Julian, smiling and touching Beth’s hair again. “He doesn’t like little girls the way I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
December 1961
BETH
Lily was as good as her word. She came back to the Greer mansion the next Christmas. And the next.
At first, every year for months and months, life went on as usual and Lily wasn’t mentioned. Then, as the darkness of winter set in, Mariana’s mood would begin to spiral down and she’d drink more. There would be more day drinks, which would start earlier and earlier, more arguments that Beth could hear as she lay in bed at night, because her parents thought that if they argued after she went to bed, she wouldn’t hear them. As if they could fool her into thinking they had a happy family if they only argued after she was supposedly asleep.
Then, like clockwork, Mariana would get excited about Christmas. She’d decide that Christmas was going to be wonderful this year and it was going to solve all of her problems. She’d go shopping and buy stacks of decorations that she never put up. She’d go looking for the biggest, most expensive Christmas tree. And she’d invite Lily to visit. If Lily’s foster family had any objections—which was unlikely—their objections would vanish at Mariana’s influence and her money. Mostly her money.
Lily always came, sleek and beautiful as a cat, her blond hair brushed soft and shining. She’d be polite and talk about how grateful she was, but as she spoke she’d lock eyes with Julian, and the two of them would stare each other down. Then Julian would pack a bag, say he was going to visit friends, and he’d leave the house.
Beth learned early that Lily and Julian hated each other. She had to learn it. The undercurrents in the house at Christmas were too deep, too important, and she needed both Julian and Lily for survival. She couldn’t afford to lose either one, so she made strategies to appease both of them. She didn’t talk about Lily in Julian’s presence, because if she did he’d simply get up and leave the room. She made one attempt to win Lily over to Julian’s side by telling her that her father was actually very nice, that once you got to know him he was kind.
Lily only looked at Beth with dead, flat eyes. “Your father would let me die in the street like a stray dog,” she said. “But he can’t, so that’s too bad for him.”
Beth didn’t talk to her about Julian after that.
Some Christmases, Mariana left the house after her husband did, and the two girls played alone. A TV was installed in the living room one year, and that Christmas, Beth and Lily watched My Three Sons and Bonanza and Bewitched. There were cartwheel competitions on the back lawn, but Lily always got closer to the edge of the drop than Beth did. No matter how close Beth got—it was part of the competition—Lily always got so close it was scary, her sneakers sliding almost over the precipice when she landed. Every competition they had went the same way, with Lily pushing and Beth sick with fear, until Beth learned, over and over, not to let the fear bother her.
Other years, Mariana stayed home at Christmas. She tried playing board games and baking cookies with them, things she never did when Beth was here alone. She pretended that Christmas was cheerful and that everything was fun. She read them stories, most of which were for little girls, younger than Beth and Lily, but they listened anyway. She played made-up games with them.
“Once upon a time, there were two little girls,” she’d say. “They were kidnapped by an evil witch who wanted to eat them, but one of them was bitter and one of them was sweet. Which girl is which, do you think?”
Beth always wanted to be the sweet girl, of course. But no matter how sweet she was, Mariana never played these games when Lily wasn’t here. Besides, even though Mariana never told the end of the story, Beth knew the sweet girl was the one who got eaten. The bitter girl was the one who survived.
* * *
—
Lily was Beth’s best friend. Her only friend, really. Beth didn’t need anyone else, because Lily knew everything. Lily knew what sex was before Beth did; she knew what death was; she knew which adults were stupid and which were even remotely worth listening to. She knew how to handle the other kids at school. She taught Beth when to fight, when to suck up, and when to flirt, even with other girls. “She’s easy,” Lily said when Beth described one particular classmate. “Pretend you like her, and you’ll get what you want.”
“I don’t like her,” Beth said.
“For thirty seconds, you do. Smile at her like you would a boy.” Lily snapped her fingers. “Now she’ll do what you say.”
It worked. Everything Lily told Beth to do worked.
When Beth was ten, a group of boys in her class noticed her. Beth was tall by then, with long red hair and wide eyes. The boys would corner her in the playground, pinch her and poke her, call her names. Try to push her down.
“It’s because you’re pretty,” Lily, who was twelve, said when Beth complained about this problem. “Get used to it.”
“I hate being a girl,” Beth said, throwing her favorite doll across her bedroom. She’d boxed up most of her dolls the year before but had kept this one out because she loved it so much. Now she’d get rid of it. “I hate it. Being a girl is awful.”
Lily only looked at her with that flat, dead expression she sometimes had in her eyes, as if she felt absolutely nothing—good, bad, nothing at all. “Being a girl is the best,” she said, “because no one ever believes you’d do something bad. People think you’ll do nothing, which means you can do anything. I’ll show you.”