“I already did,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I’m blondied out.”
I chewed thoughtfully, watching her smoke. “Do you smoke in front of Goober?”
“Absolutely not.” Sophie peeled a bit of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “Never have, never will.”
I settled my head back against the tub. A faint water stain, like a splash of old coffee, shaded the far corner in the ceiling. “Well, I’m glad. She doesn’t need to see you doing that.”
Across the room, my sister’s voice bristled. “I agree,” she said. “That’s why I don’t.”
An uncomfortable moment passed between us. Then I sat up and looked directly at her. Tiny wisps of hair stuck out from behind her ears. “Have you ever been in love?” I said finally. “I mean really in love?”
Sophie’s fingers, which were just poised to take the cigarette out of her mouth, froze for a second. Then she smiled. “Yes.”
“With who?”
“Eddie Waters,” Sophie said.
“Eddie?” I stared at her wide eyed. “From high school? Really?”
Sophie tilted her head back against the wall. “Oh God, I adored Eddie. Every single thing about him, right down to the last black curly hair on his stomach. I would have gone to the ends of the earth and back for that boy.”
“But…but you treated him like garbage!” I spluttered. “I was there! I remember. You were so mean to him all the time!”
Sophie looked down at the floor. The bib of her denim overalls was freckled with flour. “I know. I was. I was horrible to him. But I loved him. God, I loved him with my whole heart. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anybody else like that since.”
“Why were you so mean to him if you loved him?” I was genuinely flabbergasted. “I mean, it must have ended because of all the things you did to him, right? All those things you said, how you acted. He couldn’t take it any—”
“I know,” Sophie interrupted. “Don’t you think I know, Julia?”
I settled back a little. “I just…I don’t understand.”
Sophie shrugged. She took a long drag of her cigarette and then tilted her head back, letting it stream out again from between her lips. “I don’t know why I acted like that either. Eddie treated me like a princess. And I just…” She paused as a shiver ran across her shoulders. “I don’t know. I couldn’t stand it. It didn’t feel right, being treated well like that. I didn’t deserve it.”
“Why?” I was incredulous. “What did you ever do to not deserve being loved?”
Sophie looked over at me all of a sudden. Her eyes were shiny, the bottoms rimmed with tears. She took another brusque drag of her cigarette and then brushed off the front of her overalls. “Who knows?” Her voice had changed completely. It was callous now, annoyed. “I mean, who knows why people do anything they do, right?”
You do, I wanted to say.
You know why, Sophie.
“Was it because of what happened?” I asked. “With Maggie?”
Sophie shrugged. “Oh God. You can blame everything on your childhood these days, can’t you? I mean, I don’t know. Maybe a little. Mostly I think I was just an angry, unhappy person about everything back then. And I took it out on everyone else because I didn’t know what to do with it. Poor Eddie got the worst of it.”
“We did too,” I said softly. “It wasn’t just Eddie you were mean to. It was all of us. At home.”
Sophie stared at me for a few weighted seconds. Then she blinked. She stood up, took one last drag of her cigarette and threw it in the toilet. I looked straight ahead as she walked out, listened as the heavy thump of her boots against the floor got fainter and fainter down the hallway. Had I actually thought my sister was going to apologize for her behavior back then? Did I want her to? Would it change anything?
I slid all the way underwater then, staring up at the ceiling through the sheet of warm liquid until I had to come back up for air. I did it once more. And then again. The fourth time I went under, I opened my mouth and let out a yell. Just a little one. Enough so that bubbles came out of my mouth and I could hear the warped sound reverberating in my ears. I came up for air, gasping. And then I took a deep breath and went under once more. This time, I blocked my ears, squeezed my eyes shut, and screamed until I ran out of air.
chapter
41
“What was your mom like?” I was over at Aiden’s again. It was a quiet afternoon, the air cool and windy. He was working on a new piece, something small, almost fully formed.
Next to Aiden’s eye, a tiny muscle moved. “Well,” he said after a moment. “She was an artist.”
“Really? A potter, like you?”
He shook his head. “No, she painted. Watercolors, mostly. Some oils. She had a studio down in Manchester where she sold a lot of her work. We have a few framed ones in the house still. Dad put them up after she died. She’d never let us hang any of her stuff when she was around. She hated looking at her work.”