Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

Thank God the afternoon classes would be fourth-graders. They were still baby sweet, unlike the middle-school-bound fifth-graders. The fourth-graders reminded her of Alice, the lost Alice. In remembering her daughter, Helen always imagined her from the back-the part in her hair, two tails of yellow hanging down on either side of her head, tied with bows that Helen fashioned from fabric remnants and Christmas ribbon. She conjured up her smell, which was sharpest at the back of her neck, varying with the day and the weather. Chalk, soap, grass, suntan lotion, chlorine, peanut butter, pickles. She saw that neck bent over the kitchen table, intent on a project-a Christmas gift, homemade Valentines-saying to herself, as she must have heard Helen say: “Homemade is nicer.” She was so good, there was no other word for it.

But Alice ’s goodness, her very lack of reproach, became a reproach. “I did something bad,” she would say to Helen in their last days together, tentative, hopeful of contradiction. “When you do something bad, you have to be punished.”

“Yes, baby,” Helen had said. Show them how strong you are, and then one day they’ll realize you’re really a good girl, that it was just a mistake. It was a mistake, wasn’t it, baby? A mistake, an accident? Whose idea was it, baby? You can tell me. Tell Mama what happened. I know the truth is sad, but it’s important to tell the truth. Always, always. It’s better if we know everything. Maybe it will change things. Nothing’s really done, nothing’s really decided, not yet. Just tell the truth, Alice .

But Alice had shaken her head, refusing to tell Helen anything. “Everything’s decided now,” she had said. “I have to go away.”

That was the night before the final hearing, the formal sentencing. On top of everything else, Alice had just gotten her period for the first time, and they were in the bathroom, fixing her up, soaking her underpants in cold water. Menstruating at eleven, not even in sixth grade. Helen had started at thirteen, and her mother thought that was young.

Helen had given Alice the sex talk in bits and pieces over the years, so Alice wasn’t scared. She was so placid, so composed, that Helen couldn’t help trying to shake her up, make her treat the moment as more of a milestone.

“In my day, we didn’t have these adhesive-backed pads. We had to wear little belts,” she said. “With teeth.”

The image startled Alice, sitting on the toilet with a sanitary napkin in her hand.

“Did the teeth bite?” she had asked, eyes round, and Helen regretted mentioning it.

“No, they weren’t teeth-teeth. Just little holders, for the napkin’s tabs. You’re lucky. But remember, you have to be responsible now. You’re still a little girl, but your body thinks it’s a woman. Don’t forget that, okay?”

That damn song popped up again, lodged in Helen’s brain the way only an unwelcome melody can burrow in. Girl-you’re a woman now. Strangely, it brought a memory with it, but not of when Helen first heard it. Instead, she saw herself sitting on the edge of that useless kidney-shaped pool at the apartment complex off I-83, the summer after her first year of graduate school. Suddenly, anachronistically, she could remember everything-the seat of her suit pulling at the rough-textured concrete, the sun on her back, the baby oil cupped in her palm, ready to anoint her lovely freckled shoulders. And then Roy surfaced, shaking his hair, so long by today’s standards, water streaming down his well-formed chest, looking almost as good as he thought he did.

“You live around here?” he asked, and she smiled at the sheer stupidity of his come-on, delighted that he was dumb, because then she wouldn’t fall in love with him, she could just fuck him for the summer and move on, happy and carefree. She had been right about that much, at least. She hadn’t fallen in love with him. For all she knew, he could have come and read her meter over the past decade, and she wouldn’t have recognized him.

Had he recognized Helen, in her sunglasses and piled-up hair seven years ago, racing across his television set? Had he realized his daughter was one of the “pair of eleven-year-old killers” mentioned incessantly on the news, in the paper, until the phrase lost its ability to shock? Even if he had, Helen couldn’t fault him for not coming forward and confessing to Alice ’s paternity.

She probably wouldn’t have either, given the choice.

“Don’t you want dessert? They make great sundaes here.”

Alice looked up from her plate, where half of her cheeseburger and most of her french fries still sat. She wasn’t trying to impress Sharon with her willpower-she never worried about impressing Sharon -and she wasn’t self-conscious about her appetite. She plain didn’t like this cheeseburger, which had come with Cheddar instead of American cheese, or these fries, which were too real to Alice ’s way of thinking, with the skins still attached, and soft, lumpy insides, damp with oil.

“I bet you didn’t have anything like this at Middlebrook,” Sharon had said when their meals arrived, clasping her hands together as if she might say grace.

No, Alice thought. What we had was better . Thin, crispy fries, which went straight from the freezer to the fryer. Not as good as McDonald’s fries, which were the best, but better than these flabby things. Actually, the food at Middlebrook had been pretty good all-around. It may have had the worst reputation in the state, but it had the best food.

“Really,” Sharon said, “have a sundae.” Sharon loved that word: really . Really, Alice, you have to trust me. Really, Alice, this is for the best. Really, Alice, I believe you . But what did really really mean when Sharon said it? Did it indicate that everything else Sharon said was fake? Or was it supposed to show that what followed was extra-real, really-real, super-size real?

“I don’t need a sundae,” Alice said. “Really.”

“Today’s not a day to worry about calories. Treat yourself.”

Oh, so she should worry about calories, just not today. “I guess I have to go on a diet,” Alice said, head lowered over her plate, maintaining contact with Sharon ’s puppy-brown eyes through the fringe of her pale lashes.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” Sharon said. “Everyone has to worry about calories. Just not every day. It’s important to build a treat day into your schedule.”

“But I’m fat,” Alice said. “Didn’t you notice? I got really fat while I was in Middlebrook.”

She loved this word, adored making cruel pronouncements about herself. I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m clumsy . She wasn’t looking for automatic contradictions. In fact, she didn’t actually hold herself in such low esteem. No, she just liked the way adults panicked when she spoke this way, enjoyed their frantic reassurances. Sticks and stones, grown-ups said when you were little. Turned out they were the ones who feared words.

“Oh, no, honey, you shouldn’t talk that way. You’re just…big-boned, like I am. And the diet was so starchy there, and you didn’t get enough exercise, and, well, what with everything, you put on what some people call the ‘freshman fifteen.’ ”

“Only I’m not a freshman,” Alice said. “I’m a graduate. I got my GED.”

“Freshman year of college,” Sharon said. “Because that’s when most kids are away from home for the first time, making their own choices…” Her voice trailed off miserably.

“So I’m precocious,” Alice said.

“Yes,” Sharon said, clearly not getting it. “Yes, you are.”

“I’ve got the freshman fifty -and I won’t start college until the fall.”