Girl in the Rearview Mirror Read online

  An oleander bush grew beneath the window, covered in white flowers thin and crinkled as tissues. I crouched beside it, trying to slow my breathing.

  My ears had been turned inward, to the rushing of my lungs, the frenzy of my pulse. Now, they opened to the night. Something scraped and rustled inside the oleander. Birds, I hoped. Through the window came the muffled sound of a laugh track.

  Bracing against the stucco, I carefully raised myself, until I was half standing, half squatting at the window. My legs shook with adrenaline.

  At first I couldn’t see much. The blind was down, and the slats ran in stripes across my view. A beige carpet, a dark sofa, an accordion lampshade throwing brown light. Gradually, my eyes relaxed, and I saw better. A black coffee table. Bare feet propped up. Ankles porcelain white, toes siren red.

  Iris.

  I shifted to see her better. I had to press my face close to the glass. But it was bright inside, and dark out. She couldn’t see me.

  She was slouched on the couch, head thrown back against the pillows, chewing on the end of her ponytail. She seemed different. Her face was puffy. She hugged a pillow to her stomach, a Diet Coke balanced on top. She was definitely bigger, looser. Pregnant, I thought, she really is. My fist ground into the stucco.

  My sandal slipped and I went down, scraping my wrist against the wall. The suddenness was jolting. I knelt, horrified, below the window, waiting for the blinds to lift, Iris to look out.

  Nothing happened. The night continued its rustling, scraping business. I breathed again. I shook the pebbles from my shoes and eased myself back up.

  Guy had entered the room. He stood across from the window, leaning in a door I hadn’t noticed when I was staring at Iris. It was dark, presumably leading to a hallway. He wore the same jeans as the night before, fabric bagging in the legs. As usual, he was restless, shifting from foot to foot, biting his nails. I knew he picked at his calluses, too, the hard caps of blisters on his palm. I wondered what he’d done after sneaking out of my apartment. Whether he’d told Iris about me—whether they’d laughed.

  But now they were ignoring each other, like any bored siblings would. She’d drawn her feet onto the couch and tucked them under her.

  Guy turned to the door. He leaned a hand against the frame. And Iris stepped into it.

  This was Iris. Her face wore a prissy grimace; her bright hair bulged in a tumorous bun on her head. Her short dress clung to her perfectly flat stomach. Apparently, her pseudo–maternity outfits had been for my benefit. A hard lozenge of anger wedged in my sternum. Her fault, all of it.

  She was talking with Guy, their voices inaudible beneath the TV. I glanced at the girl on the couch. She now seemed obviously not Iris. I’d only seen who I’d expected to see. Her face was softer and plainer, her hair a paler red. She chewed her lip, anxiously watching Guy and Iris.

  They were fighting, Iris’s face lively with anger, or disdain. She reached up and pummeled Guy with her fists, landing blows on his shoulder and chest. He grabbed her hands and held them together, making her twist and flail against his grip. With a growling screech, she pulled away. She cradled her wrists to her chest, wearing a pout that could sell lipstick.

  She was so fake. A conniving bitch, a despicable liar who’d destroyed Amabel.

  Guy fell for it. He leaned down as if he were going to kiss her—instead he whispered into her ear. He ran his hands down her bare arms, to her hands, squeezed them. He went out into the dark hallway.

  My heart was pounding. I remembered suddenly how I’d cried in bed, after we’d had sex, and he’d held me.

  Iris approached the window, and I was too startled to duck. My face froze in a silent gasp. But she kept moving, sat on the couch. She curled her arm around the girl and spoke to her. The girl kept her eyes on the TV, and Iris raised her voice, angry, shaking her shoulder. The girl spun toward her, mouth dropped open.

  Iris kept talking. The girl seemed frightened. She nodded, a nervous bob of the chin.

  When Guy returned, he wore a backpack over a shoulder and gripped a duffel bag. His whole body was rigid.

  Their anxiety was contagious. I glanced behind me. Total darkness had fallen, erasing the yard. Was the night always so quiet? In the silence, the smell of fire was more powerful.

  When I looked back in, Guy and Iris were leaving, their fingers twined together.

  I ran along the back of the house, the gravel slinging away from my feet. I squatted at the corner of the driveway. The bike waited. I waited.

  When they came out, they were still arguing.

  “Not worth the risk,” Guy was saying.

  Iris’s laugh like a caw. “Wouldn’t do it to me.” Their feet scraped the pavement.

  I peered around the corner. Guy was fastening Iris’s helmet, her face tilting up. I could see the sharp jut of her chin, her little nose. Guy kissed her, not a passionate kiss, but a touch on the lips. A kiss that spoke of routine, of long familiarity.

  How novel Guy had felt to me, and also nostalgic—the smell of Pert Plus and cigarettes, the crispy gel in his hair, the calluses on his hands. Like the boys I’d known as Natalie, and I’d fallen for it, as if I hadn’t changed a bit.

  Drawing back around the house, I sat, legs spread in front of me, dumb.

  The bike’s engine roared to life, and I knew without watching that Guy drove and Iris held on to him, her cheek pressed to his back. (The smell of salt, of oranges, the warm breeze.)

  I listened to the bike ease down the driveway then gallop noisily up the street, until the sound faded to silence.

  28

  Everything, everything, she’d said was a lie.

  I waded through a carpet of takeout menus and coupon clippers and junk mail to their front door. Cheap hollow metal, just like my apartment door. A motion detector light snapped on, accusatory.

  Just a week ago, I’d thought nothing of letting myself into the Martins’ house, wandering through the laundry room and setting up coffee in the kitchen, helping myself to a piece of fruit from the bowl. I knew the garage code. I knew where they kept the safe, which medicines were in the cabinet, the brand of milk they preferred. Somehow, that house had led me to this one.

  Everything everyone had said was a lie.

  I pressed the bell.

  The door opened the length of the chain lock, and the Iris lookalike peered out. Her hair frizzed in a halo around her face.

  “Hi.” My voice cracked, brittle. I hadn’t spoken all day. “Is Iris home?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Really? She told me to meet her here.” I pretended to check a watch on my naked wrist. The girl didn’t notice.

  “She’s out.” Her voice operated with a slight delay. A dreamy, serene monotone.

  “Will she be back soon?”

  She might have shrugged; the sliver of her face betrayed nothing.

  “Well—” I turned away, as if about to leave, and hesitated. “Could I use your bathroom? Long drive home.”

  Her hand tightened on the doorknob, shrinking the angle of the open door. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in. There are creepers around here.”

  “Creepers?” I wished I could get a better look at her face. By the smell drifting from the house, I guessed she was stoned, and maybe drunk.

  “Iris said to lock the door.”

  “Are you alone?” I winced. It was something a creeper would ask.

  She stared at me, unmoving.

  “I’m not a creeper. I’m a friend of Iris’s. I won’t be long, I promise.”

  Sighing, she jangled the locks and swung the door open. The moment I was inside, she pressed it closed and locked it again.

  The smell was oppressive, skunky pot and incense battling with the fug of dog. I held out my hand to the girl and she put her palm in it, limp as a frightened rabbit.

  “I’m Finn.”

  “Stacy.” She crossed her arms over her belly. Her similarity to Iris was at once striking and submerged, like a waterco
lor painting of a photograph. She wore a loose black dress that made her skin pale as milk. On the top of her left foot, a tattoo scrawled, illegible cursive, festooned with flowers and hearts.

  She studied me with the same curiosity. “Iris doesn’t have many friends over.”

  “I know her through Guy. You’re her sister?”

  She nodded, reaching to toy with a gold locket on a slim chain.

  “Older or younger?”

  “She’s my big sister.”

  I smiled, out of conversation. We were in a fusty, cramped living room. A pair of tufted armchairs flanked a mauve love seat, where a runty yellow-white dog was curled, so still it might have been dead. A glassed-in cabinet displayed dozens of porcelain statuettes: couples embracing, a baby angel sleeping on a swan, girls in white dresses. An archway opened into the dining room, where heavy furniture loomed in the dark. In the other direction was a narrow hallway lined with closed doors. The sound of the TV carried from the end of it. The little dead dog gave a wheezing snore.

  “Well,” Stacy said. “Bathroom’s through here.” She pointed down the hall and started that way herself. Her walk was languid, drifting, like her speech. She went into the last room without glancing back.

  I lingered, waiting for her to be safely absorbed in the TV. My pulse was humming. I figured I had about five minutes.

  I sidled down the hallway, into the first door. A bedroom, as garish and loud as Stacy had been plain and quiet. Green paint, pink bedspread, photographs covering a wall. I stepped closer, trampling piles of clothing. They were old pictures, Kodak prints, with red-eye smiles and shiny skin. Most of a boy, maybe sixteen, with a mop of blue-black hair and eyes the color of a new penny. Skateboarding, holding a guitar, smoking a cigarette and doing his best James Dean impression.

  In one photo, he stood beside a girl in a prom dress. She was almost painfully pretty. Platinum hair, wide princess eyes, smile white as a fresh slice of apple.

  She appeared again and again, in capris, bikini, pajamas. It took me a while to recognize her as Stacy. Not only because she was older, and no longer blond. She’d faded, somehow.

  I moved on, having dawdled too long.

  Next was the bathroom, medicine cabinet stocked with a half dozen prescription bottles made out to Stacy Jamison. Nothing I recognized, nothing to give a clue as to her illness, just warnings against using alcohol and heavy machinery.

  The last room was across from the den, where a commercial blared. I hoped Stacy was stupefied on the sofa. I slipped in and shut the door behind me.

  Iris’s personality shouted through the room. In the pictures of fashion models pinned to the walls, the red silk sheets, the mirrored closet doors. Two closets, because this was the master bedroom. The en suite bathroom was ostentatious-nineties, pebbled glass and gold trim. The vanity was filmed with decades of dirt, the tiles rimmed with black mold. I picked through the drawers. No prenatal vitamins, no medications, no special pregnancy paraphernalia. A bulk box of tampons was stashed under the sink.

  I moved on to the closets. One stuffed with clothes, so crowded they were pressed into wrinkles. When I rifled through the hangers, I noticed labels Marina wore.

  The other closet was all bags and shoes. Here I was lucky. In a floppy leather handbag, I discovered a case of birth control pills, punched out to Thursday. Today.

  I smiled, my lips stiff from disuse. Iris wasn’t pregnant. Wasn’t having Philip’s baby, couldn’t go to the tabloids and smear the Martins’ name. I pocketed the case, pleased to imagine Iris digging through her things, trying to find it.

  I went through her nightstand next, searching for a diary, a stash of ultrasounds—how long would she have kept up the charade?—or anything else she might have against Philip. I found a blue glass pipe, cigarettes, gum, loose coins. And finally, folded under a stack of concert tickets, a newspaper article, worn thin at the folds. Society fluff covering this year’s Easter brunch benefit; Philip, Marina, and Amabel photographed in front of an ice sculpture.

  I skimmed the article, my uncertainty returning. Why did Iris keep this—had she thought Philip looked handsome here? It was a nice shot of him. He held Ammy’s hand, and she hid her face against his stomach.

  I was so absorbed in the photograph that I didn’t notice Stacy until she cleared her throat.

  I crushed the article in my fist and braced for the torrent of fury I’d get from Iris.

  Stacy tilted her head. “What are you doing? The bathroom’s out there.”

  “I used the one in here.”

  “Why?” She seemed confused, not angry.

  “It seemed—more private,” I said. She was looking wonderingly at the paper in my fist. I rushed to the closet and ran my fingers down an embroidered sleeve. “I got distracted by her clothes. She has really nice things.”

  Stacy hummed. “She doesn’t let anyone borrow them.”

  I studied her. Resentment? Envy? She was monotonous as a cornfield, and seemed equally wholesome and unsurprising.

  “You done?” She flipped off the light and headed back to the den. I trailed behind. She flopped on the floor in front of the couch, stretching her legs. I hovered in the doorway, across from the window. I felt uneasy, as if now someone were watching me. On TV, coiffed middle-aged women argued drunkenly in the back of a limo.

  Stacy uncapped a bottle of nail polish and bent her knee under her chin. She slicked red over her toenails unsteadily.

  “Where did Iris and Guy go?” I asked.

  “Out.” She was concentrating and didn’t look up.

  “Do you think they’ll be back?”

  “Nope. She’s spending the night.” She sighed. Polish had dripped onto the carpet. She didn’t mop it up, but simply dipped the brush back into the bottle and swept off the excess. Suddenly, she said, “It’s funny, because they’re breaking up anyway.”

  “Really? She didn’t mention that to me.”

  Stacy smiled. “It’s a secret. We’re going away soon. Finally.”

  “Really?” I said again. “Where are you going?”

  She blew hair from her face. “Anywhere’s better than here. I hope California.”

  “When are you leaving?” I was careful to keep my voice even.

  “Soon,” she said. “We’re going to get some money.”

  “You’re not packed,” I said. Calmly, casually.

  “We’re traveling light,” she said in a singsong, like she was quoting someone. She laughed softly.

  I swallowed my anger. So Iris was still scheming. Traveling light, breaking up with Guy, anticipating money. I thought of the cash in my glove compartment. Was another envelope stuffed with crisp bills heading Iris’s way? For what? I still couldn’t say what my own money was for; it didn’t feel like severance, not the way they’d done it. It was for something else, and it made me as uneasy as the black window I was facing, as the old newspaper article in Iris’s drawer and the key Guy left on my dresser.

  Having finished one foot, Stacy stretched her leg and wiggled her toes. “So how do you know Iris again?”

  “Through a mutual friend.” I studied her. Maybe she wasn’t as ignorant as she seemed. An actress, like her sister. “Maybe you know him. Philip Martin?”

  She glanced up. Her lips were parted innocently, a dash between her eyebrows. “I don’t think so.”

  “She’s really close with him,” I went on. “Actually, she’s pregnant. I guess that’s why she’s breaking up with Guy.”

  I expected doubt, or concern. Instead Stacy froze, the brush lifted in midair like a conductor’s baton. “She isn’t! She would never!”

  She bolted upward, kicking, the polish tipping over. Her body was bigger, stronger in motion. I put my arms out to defend myself, but she pushed past me and charged down the hallway.

  I found her in the kitchen, holding the receiver of an old landline phone, her fingers spinning the rotary dial. Instinctively, I dropped my hand on the cradle, cutting off the call.

  He
r mouth opened to an O. Her face was red-streaked, puffy.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was loud and angry. I took the phone away and hung it up.

  Sobs shuddered in her chest. I was frightened of her emotion, of the noisiness in the silent house. It seemed that the whole town would hear. “Don’t be upset,” I said desperately, the way I’d begged Ammy to calm down from a tantrum.

  In the cabinets, I found a sleeve of red plastic cups and filled one with tap water. Stacy took it from me, obedient, making a face as she sipped. She hiccupped.

  I wished for Amabel. A piercing ache for the tiny tender gestures that made up our days. I wanted to pour her a glass of juice, coax tangles from her hair, talk her out of a bad dream.

  Stacy was oblivious to my wince of pain. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, like a child. I noticed something I hadn’t before. On her wrists, a thickening of the skin, purplish. Old scars.

  She saw me see them. She wrapped her empty hand around her wrist protectively.

  I looked away. Even in the spastic glow of the overhead light, I could see how filthy the place was. Little brown spots on the counter suggested cockroaches. My pity for Stacy was as instinctive and strong as my dislike of her sister. I wondered what her story was.

  Stacy sniffled. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. Why did you get so upset?” When she hugged herself without responding, I added, “I don’t think she’s really pregnant.”

  Her fingers traveled to the locket again, and she ran the heart along its chain.

  “What did Iris say to you before she left? It looked like you were arguing.”

  Her shoulders rose defensively. “How did you know?”

  Stupid, I thought. I should have asked whether Iris had ever been a waitress, why she was breaking up with Guy. Questions that wouldn’t make Stacy tip her head to the side and frown at me. Suspicious, finally, of the stranger in her house.