Amandine Page 9

  But there was no Batman. Just me and my mother.

  After we had taken our seats in the two chairs facing him, Mr. Serra stood up and closed his office door.

  His window showed off a boring view of the parking lot. I looked out anyway.

  It was on my insistence the night before that my mother had called Mr. Serra. Outrage had made me brave. I would expose Amandine, I decided. I would plead my case and explain who she really was, and maybe everyone would understand that none of this was my fault, and maybe they’d even realize that it was I who had suffered most.

  In the fresh glare of morning light, with my mother coiled like a spring in the chair beside me, my nerve faltered. I squinted into the sun. If I stared long enough, perhaps I would go blind. At least it would create a new crisis to stamp out the old one.

  “Delia,” said Mr. Serra. I turned. He looked as if he would rather be anywhere than behind his square steel desk. “This is a delicate predicament. The school is reluctant to take action, officially, as there has not been a formal complaint filed, and as whatever did or did not happen, did or did not happen outside the school’s jurisdiction. But. In light of your current … dilemma, in that somehow this … story … has become … known, I am ready to hear what you feel you need to say. So, yes.” He smoothed a hand over the back of his head, spent from his excessive speechmaking. Then he picked up a piece of paper and set it down without looking at it. “You think, it is your opinion, that Amandine Elroy-Bell is a … threat … to the … student body?”

  “I know she’s lying,” I said with what I hoped was an expression of the whole truth under oath. “She’s lied before.”

  “Well, Delia, there are two sides to every story. Another version would suggest that maybe it is you who hasn’t been playing as straight a hand as you might have.” Mr. Serra put down his pen and laced his fingers together over his chest. “According to her mother, Amandine says you took things from her.”

  “That I know is nonsense.” My mother raised a hand to stop Mr. Serra from more talk. “After we spoke on the phone last night, I checked my daughter’s room. There’s no box of pins and pens and whatever else. There’s nothing.” Now the flat of her hand cut straight across the air. “Nothing. And you have to admit, it was such a detailed fib. In fact, it’s what convinced me that our meeting today might be a good idea. I’m beginning to think that the girl, Amandine, is quite evidently disturbed.”

  I had dropped Amandine’s dragonfly pin into her book bag just yesterday. I just knew she would try to use my cigar box against me. Now I had nothing to hide. I sat straighter in my chair.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” I said stoutly to Mr. Serra. “Amandine’s the liar. She drew these gross pictures and she made up stories all the time. The fact is, she’s delusional.” I had picked out the word last night, as I lay sleepless in my bed.

  Mr. Serra coughed. “Yes, well. Hmm. You see, Delia, we have an information problem now. Because according to what Amandine told her mother, and according to what her mother told me, you … also … like to make up stories.”

  That surprised me. “No,” I insisted. “She made up stories. She was always making up—”

  “And that you lived, a little bit, in your own world. That you liked to play make-believe games about students and, ahem, teachers …” Mr. Serra coughed again. Remembering Amandine’s brutal imitation of him, I could feel unwanted laughter bubble up in my throat. Mr. Serra frowned at my smile. “Little games of an unpleasant nature.”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t, that was her.”

  “Also, that you insisted you had …” Now he stared at a piece of paper in front of him. A paper filled with conversation scraps, I realized. A funnel of lies straight from Amandine to her mother to Mr. Serra. “That you had an older brother. She said you talked about him all the time, as if he were real. She said that you once became very agitated when she questioned this brother’s identity.”

  I went cold. A sweat broke out on my upper lip. My one stupid lonely lie. Amandine had thought she would catch me with the cigar box but instead she caught me—by accident—with Ethan.

  Carefully, I looked at my mother, who stared straight ahead, although every thin bone in her neck became visible. She leaned toward Mr. Serra, and then sat back again with a sigh. When she spoke next, her voice was level as if she were talking to a client.

  “I’m hopeful that my husband and I can resolve this terrible misunderstanding, Mr. Serra. My feeling is that the best we can do is to maintain a noble silence until this all quiets down. The nature of the friendship between the two girls seems beside the point. We’ve probably taken up too much of your time already.”

  “No, no! The friendship is the whole point. It is! Amandine played much worse games!” I was frantic, as the yoke of blame slipped back over my head. It was so unfair, all of it. “You can ask our other friend, our friend, Mary … I already talked to her. She said she’d tell …”

  “Reverend Whitecomb called me to ask specifically, on behalf of his daughter, that she not get involved in this … situation,” said Mr. Serra.

  My mouth gaped open.

  “Of course, I understand,” said my mother. “It’s an unpleasant business.”

  “Mom,” I begged, “the older brother thing was just—”

  “How could you do this to Dad and me?” Mom broke in, turning on me. “What is wrong with you, Delia?”

  “It was one dumb story,” I pleaded. I was close to tears. “What I made up and what Amandine did are two totally different things. And her thing is way, way worse.”

  My mother looked weary, but she didn’t want to say anything more in front of Mr. Serra. “I think we’re finished here.”

  Mr. Serra nodded almost imperceptibly, then stood and opened his office door.

  As we left, I saw him press a card into my mother’s hand. “She’s a very good doctor, specializes in adolescents, if you ever need to talk … about …”

  My mother took the card and tucked it into her purse with a nod. I knew she was too embarrassed to speak another word.

  “I’m sorry.” Mary’s voice was soft and floaty as a cobweb. I could hardly catch hold of it. In the background, I heard Jasper bouncing a basketball on the Whitecombs’ kitchen floor. I pressed the phone closer to my ear.

  “I don’t need sorry,” I told her. “I need help. If you could come with me to Mr. Serra’s office and explain about that picture, for one, it would really mean a lot to me.”

  “I tore up that picture,” she said.

  “Or how Amandine made up all those skits and then got us to do them with her.”

  “Delia, I never did those stupid skits. Not really. Listen, Amandine’s just a person who’s lost hold of herself. Or maybe all those skit people are the real Amandine. In the end, it probably doesn’t make a difference. All I know is she’s messed up, and I don’t want anything to do with her. Besides, how I can really help with whatever happened between, you know, between her and your dad …”

  “Nothing happened. That’s the point. It’s a lie, the way she always—”

  “Delia, my dad and Mr. Serra both decided we should let it all blow over, and that I should keep my distance in the meantime. You can understand that, right?”

  “Right.” I slammed down the phone. I wondered what more there was to lose.

  My parents were in the den, talking intently. I stood in the doorway. I had interrupted too early. They looked up from where they were sitting, side by side on the love seat. Their hands were around their tea mugs and their shoes were kicked off. They did not appear to be in any mood for good-night hugs, not that I was much in the mood to give them.

  “Once, Mrs. Gogglio made me tea,” I said. I looked around. The only other place to sit in the room was a high-backed armchair, and Mom’s briefcase was opened on top of it.

  “That’s nice,” said my father.

  “It was good. Irish breakfast. She had this funny Popeye teapot she found in
—”

  “Delia, Mom and I are talking. Go ahead and watch television in the living room, if you want. Come visit us a little later.”

  “There’s nothing on television,” I said. I began to back toward the door anyway.

  “Read, then, your mother and I have things to say.”

  “Can I listen? It’s not like I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  My father made a gesture of impatience. I pushed ahead anyhow.

  “I know I failed, I know that, okay? But are you going to hold it against me for the rest of my stupid life?”

  My mother laughed, a sad sound. “It wasn’t Dad’s and my intention to give you a stupid life. Just as it wouldn’t be our intention for you to use things that are private and personal to this family in order to play strange little games with your friends.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by—”

  “A miscarriage is common enough, Delia, especially during a first pregnancy. But it’s private, it’s personal to a family. That is, it was, until you decide to … to hurt us with it. Then it becomes … something else.”

  “I wish I’d been a boy,” I burst out. My voice was too shrill. “I wish I had been anyone, instead of me.”

  “Now you’re just talking a lot of crazy talk,” said Dad. “Go to bed, Delia, all right? It’s been a long day.” He himself, I noticed, looked flat-out exhausted.

  “Come give me a good-night hug.” Mom reached out. I went to her. “Oh, Delia,” she said softly, her mouth at my ear as she pulled me close. “What are you missing? What do you ever need?”

  “Nothing, I guess,” I answered, straightening out of her hug. “I guess I’ve got everything, don’t I?”

  There was nothing they could say that would make us feel better.

  I left, closing the door behind me.

  It was a long time ago; I must have been in fifth grade, that evening when my mother told me the story of me. We were living in Connecticut at the time, and Lexi Neumann’s mother had just given birth to twins, but one of them was sick.

  “Remember the Neumanns in your prayers tonight,” my mother said when she came to tuck me into bed.

  “I don’t know why everyone’s so upset,” I’d mentioned. “Whatever happens to the sick one, they still have a whole other brand-new baby.”

  My mother had leaned down and cupped my face in her hands. “A mother’s love cannot be measured,” she said. And that’s when she explained how hard it had been to have me. She left out nothing, even telling me about her late miscarriage and the years of hoping that came afterward, and her story ended with the happy day I was born. The happiest day of her life, she said.

  It was the miscarriage part, though, that seemed the most romantic and sad to me, the part of the story I locked onto. I asked my mother if she knew whether the baby would have been a boy or girl. A boy, she answered.

  “But if that first baby had been a girl, then what would my name have been?”

  “I don’t know. I never had a second-favorite girl name,” my mother answered, adding, “and I never had a second-favorite girl. You are our only one. Now good night, Delia.”

  I was glad to hear that, and so I don’t know why exactly my imagination invented a secret brother, but from that night forward, he was always there. A big brother with my mother’s grace and my father’s charm. He became everything I wished I could be.

  In real life, the sick twin got well, and Lexi had two loud and healthy little sisters living in her house. She always said I was luckier being an only child than an oldest, but none of her reasons convinced me. I think she was only trying to make me feel better.

  Mrs. Gogglio clapped her hands when I agreed. The car almost swerved out of its lane.

  “Wonderful!” she said, gripping the steering wheel again. “Now then, will you come in with me on Sunday to meet Melvin? He’s the manager in charge of volunteering.”

  “What makes you think I’d make a good volunteer?” I asked. I felt reluctant, even unhappy that she had sprung this on me. What did I have in common with a bunch of old people? What did I know about taking care of them?

  “You’re a five-star listener, for one,” she replied.

  “But if I’m no good at it, Mrs. Gogglio, then I don’t want to keep going.”

  “And I wouldn’t press it on you. All I’m asking for is an honest try. You can give that, can’t you?

  I nodded yes.

  “If it works out, I’ll readjust my own schedule so I work Sundays and take off Mondays. That means you’ll ride the bus to school on Mondays. Think you can handle the bus, just for a day?”

  I nodded again. “Really, though, why do you want me to do this so bad?”

  “Because I think you’d have a talent for it,” she. answered firmly.

  Spending my Sundays at Sunrise Assisted did not seem too thrilling, but it wasn’t as if I had anything else to do. I think Mrs. Gogglio realized that, as well. The school week had become a stack of days to get through, and the weekend a tense anticipation of the next stack about to be served. At home, the strain and silence were almost unbearable.

  By the next Sunday, I found myself being introduced to Melvin and touring the halls and grounds of Sunrise Assisted. In my regular blue jeans paired with an issued white smock and an identification badge—Delilah Blaine—I felt unfamiliar to myself.

  “They need you,” said Melvin, when I spoke up a few of my doubts. “It’s a lonely business, getting old. People’ll be glad enough that you showed up.”

  My first scheduled working Sunday, I felt like the new girl all over again, only here it didn’t seem that I had much to prove. My duties were light and it was attitude, Mrs. Gogglio said, that was most important. At Sunrise Assisted, I had to be efficient and helpful, to put aside whatever was happening at school and home. As Delilah Blaine, I changed bedding, set up tables for lunches and games, collected stray golf and tennis balls, and held up the listening end on the slow unraveling spools of other people’s lives. In the beginning, I felt as if I was playing a role. In my baggy smock and false identification badge, I eased into my character, “Delilah,” who was cheerful and unfazed. I learned how to deal with Mrs. Halliday, who was cranky in the morning, and Mr. Waters, who liked to sneak up to the roof. I understood how Ms. Gould liked her egg salad with chopped pickles, and that while Mrs. Lee loved outdoor walks, she also tired easily. I picked up some of Mrs. Gogglio’s habits, too, the way she respectfully called her patients ma’am or mister, and some of her briskly friendly expressions. “Well, aren’t you a sport!” Or, “Now who’s giving me uphill on this lovely day?”

  Eventually, I knew everyone’s names and most of their histories.

  “See? It’s exactly like I said. You’ve got a real talent for people management, for caring and listening,” said Mrs. Gogglio.

  “Huh.” I didn’t believe her. I’d never had a talent for anything.

  “It’s true,” she insisted. “People trust you with their stories, Delilah, and you’re good at keeping the peace. It’s a real nice part of your character.”

  That made me the exact opposite of Amandine, if my “talent,” as Mrs. Gogglio called it, was actually part of my character. Amandine’s talent was so different from her character that it seemed to pull her in an opposite direction. And I wondered if that was why Amandine didn’t quite work as a whole person.

  So maybe I was luckier than Amandine. Maybe I got something that she didn’t.

  It was a weird thing to think about.

  “You hardly talk to me anymore,” I said to my mother, staring across the table at her one night during dinner. It had been nearly three weeks since the meeting with Mr. Serra. When I wasn’t under Mrs. Gogglio’s wing or sleepwalking through school, I was left to my own devices, to try to make peace and sense inside a house that seemed permanently shadowed by Amandine’s lie.

  “That’s not true,” she said.

  “Or to Dad, either. “You’re so quiet all the time.”

&n
bsp; “I have a lot to think about, Delia.” Now my mother clawed in her purse for her cell phone, which was rarely out of her reach. “I just remembered, I have to call work.” She stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll only be a minute.”

  She disappeared into the den, and I looked down at my plate. I knew that even if I ate everything on it and went back for seconds, I would not get rid of my hunger. In this house, I would not get rid of the feeling of wanting more, not at dinner nor any other time.

  That night, I woke to quiet voices. I slipped out of bed and crept halfway down the stairs. In the living room, I could hear my parents talking. I pulled my nightshirt over my cold knees and sat still, listening. In the past month, I had perfected the art of eavesdropping.

  Their conversation was heavy with pauses, as if they had been at it awhile. Dad’s voice was rough, thirsty-sounding. “Because we deserve to be happy, Eva. I can’t drag myself through one more day.”

  “You have to stop—”

  “Each day, the same. We’ve got to get away from here.”

  “There’s nothing—”

  “I walk into town and I imagine that a thousand pairs of eyes are staring at me. Accusing me.”

  A long pause. “Nobody’s staring,” my mother finally insisted. “A horrible little child, a child left alone with too much imagination. She’s ill, she needs help. People recognize that.”

  For a moment, I thought that Mom was talking about me. My hand gripped the banister. The silence dragged.

  “Such a strange, strange person for Delia to befriend,” my father remarked at length.

  “Oh, but Delia isn’t the kind of girl who …”

  But I had already raced on silent feet back up the stairs to my room. I couldn’t bear to listen to the kind of girl I wasn’t.

  The power of one lie. It probably took a few seconds to tell, the amount of time it takes an earthquake to destroy a village. Now we were living in rubble.