All morning she thought about what to do. Confront Trip? Confront Pearl? Confront them both together? She and her husband did not speak to the children about their love lives—she’d had a talk with Lexie and Izzy, when their periods had started, about their responsibilities. (“Vulnerabilities,” Izzy had corrected her, and left the room.) But in general she preferred to assume that her children were smart enough to make their own decisions, that the school had armed them well with knowledge. If they were up to things—as she euphemistically thought of it—she didn’t need, or want, to know. To stand in front of Trip and that girl and say to them, I know what you’ve been doing—it seemed as mortifying as stripping them both naked.
At last, midway through the morning, she found herself getting into her car and driving to the little house on Winslow. Mia would be there, she knew, working on her photographs. Mrs. Richardson opened the shared side door and entered without knocking. This was her house, after all, not Mia’s; as the landlord, she had the right. The downstairs apartment was silent; it was eleven o’clock and Mr. Yang was at work. Upstairs, however, she could hear Mia in the kitchen: the rumble of a kettle coming to a boil, a whistle springing to life and then subsiding as someone lifted it from the stove. Mrs. Richardson climbed the steps to the second floor, noting the linoleum that was just beginning to peel at the corners of the treads. That would have to be fixed, she thought. She would have the entire staircase—no, the entire apartment—stripped bare and redone.
The door to the upstairs apartment was unlocked, and Mia looked up, alarmed, as Mrs. Richardson came into the kitchen.
“I didn’t expect anyone,” she said. The kettle gave a faint whine as she set it back on the hot burner. “Did you need something?” Mrs. Richardson’s gaze swept over the apartment: the sink with Pearl’s breakfast dishes still stacked over the drain, the array of pillows that passed for a couch, the half-open door to Mia’s bedroom, where a mattress lay on the carpet. It was such a pathetic life, she thought; they had so little. And then she spotted something familiar, draped over the back of one of the mismatched kitchen chairs: Izzy’s jacket. Izzy had left it there on her last visit, and the casual carelessness of this gesture affronted Mrs. Richardson. As if Izzy lived here, as if this were her home, as if she were Mia’s daughter, not Mrs. Richardson’s own.
“I always knew there was something about you,” she said.
“Pardon?”
Mrs. Richardson did not respond right away. Not even a real bed, she thought. Not even a real couch. What kind of grown woman sits on the floor, sleeps on the floor? What kind of life was this?
“I suppose you thought you could hide,” she said to the kitchen table, where Mia had been carefully splicing a photograph of a dog and a man together. “I suppose you thought no one would ever know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mia began. Her knuckles clenched the handle of her mug.
“Don’t you? I’m sure Joseph and Madeline Ryan do.” Mia went silent. “I’m sure they’d like to know where you are. So would your parents. I’m sure they’d love to know where Pearl is, too.” Mrs. Richardson shot Mia a glance. “Don’t try to lie about it. You’re a very good liar, but I know all about it. I know all about you.”
“What do you want?”
“I almost didn’t say anything. I thought, what’s in the past is past. Maybe she’s made a new life. But I see you’ve raised your daughter to be just as amoral as you.”
“Pearl?” Mia’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”
“What a hypocrite you are. You stole that couple’s child and then you tried to take a baby away from the McCulloughs.”
“Pearl is my child.”
“You had a little help making her, didn’t you?” Mrs. Richardson raised an eyebrow. “Linda McCullough and I have been friends for forty years. She’s like a sister to me. And no one deserves a child more than she does.”
“It’s not a question of deserving. I just think a mother has a right to raise her own child.”
“Do you? Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”
Mia flushed. “If May Ling could choose, don’t you think she’d choose to stay with her real mother? The mother who gave birth to her?”
“Maybe.” Mrs. Richardson looked at Mia closely. “The Ryans are rich. They wanted a baby so desperately. They’d have given her a wonderful life. If Pearl had gotten to choose, do you think she’d have chosen to stay with you? To live like a vagabond?”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Mia said suddenly. “I think you can’t imagine. Why anyone would choose a different life from the one you’ve got. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big lawn, a fancy car, a job in an office. Why anyone would choose anything different than what you’d choose.” Now it was her turn to study Mrs. Richardson, as if the key to understanding her were coded into her face. “It terrifies you. That you missed out on something. That you gave up something you didn’t know you wanted.” A sharp, pitying smile pinched the corners of her lips. “What was it? Was it a boy? Was it a vocation? Or was it a whole life?”
Mrs. Richardson shuffled the snippets of Mia’s photographs on the table. Under her hands pieces of dog and pieces of man separated and mingled and re-formed.
“I think it’s time you moved on,” she said. With one hand she lifted Izzy’s jacket from the chair and dusted it, as if it were soiled. “By tomorrow.” She set a folded hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “This should more than make up for the rent for the month. We’ll call it even.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Mrs. Richardson headed for the door. “Ask your daughter,” she said, and the door shut behind her.
19
Friday afternoon, when the bell rang at just after one, Pearl settled herself into seventh period and set her bag beside her chair. She was going to meet Trip at his car after school; he had put a note into her locker that morning. Lexie had left another after lunch: Movie tonight? Deep Impact? It was almost enough to make her forget that she and Moody were no longer friends. Every day they still saw each other in class, but most days he jumped up as soon as the bell rang and bolted out the door before she’d even had a chance to close her binder. Now there he was across the aisle, bent over his copy of Othello. She wondered if they’d ever get back to normal, if things would ever be the same between them. Sex changed things, she realized—not just between you and the other person, but between you and everyone.
She was still turning this insight over in her mind when the classroom phone rang. It was usually a question from the main office about something—a misplaced attendance sheet, an excuse for a tardy student—so she paid no attention until Mrs. Thomas hung up and came to crouch by her desk.
“Pearl,” she said softly, “the office says your mother’s here to pick you up. Take your things with you, they said.” She went back to the board, where she was outlining the third act of the play, and Pearl puzzled over this as she packed her books away. Was there an appointment she’d forgotten? Was there some kind of emergency? Out of instinct, she shot a quick look at Moody in the next seat—the closest they’d come to a conversation in weeks. But Moody seemed as clueless as she was, and the last thing she remembered as she left the classroom was his face, their shared moment of confusion.
She came out of the science wing door and saw her mother parked by the curb, leaning back against the little tan Rabbit, waiting for her.