Girl in the Rearview Mirror Read online

  I couldn’t unsee it. Their faces, small and round, the knobbed little chin, the wispy pale eyebrows, the small pink mouth.

  The newspaper article in Iris’s drawer wasn’t about Philip at all. It was Amabel, her little pale red head against Philip and Marina’s blond ones.

  “The baby was a girl,” I said. “With red hair. And blue eyes.”

  Stacy was flushed. She was blinking, confused, upset. She pressed her fingers to her sternum.

  “You gave her up, didn’t you? Someone adopted her.” My voice sounded distant.

  Ammy, dancing in the fitness room mirror; Ammy reaching out the car window to grab the bougainvillea; Ammy’s imperial voice when we played with her dolls. The Martins’ daughter, their jewel, their heart; coddled and spoiled and loved. My Amabel. Stacy’s.

  The waitress appeared at our table, saw our faces, and melted away. The racket of the dining room was muted and fuzzy. Afternoon sun glared through our window and made everything overexposed.

  “Stacy?” I said. “Please. This is important.”

  “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about it,” Stacy said. “It was private.”

  “I’ll keep it a secret. I swear.”

  She pulled a strand of hair over her mouth nervously. “How did you know?”

  “I know her. The little girl. Was this five years ago? When you were sixteen?” I gestured to the photo, forgotten on the table. “You look like you were just old enough to drive.”

  “I don’t drive. I couldn’t learn. I was too big.”

  “It was five years ago, right? The baby was born in September.”

  A fat solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She let it run.

  “Did you know who took her?” I asked. “Did you meet them? Was it a couple named the Martins?”

  “The Hughes.” She sounded certain. “They told me she’d be Becky Hughes. Look.” She fished the locket from under her collar. She held it out to me and let me unclasp it. Becky was engraved inside. The heart-shaped charm felt heavy, like solid gold.

  “What were they like? Was Mrs. Hughes blond, pretty? And Mr. Hughes, was he tall? Blue eyes?” I was describing the Martins like I didn’t know them. And in fact I suddenly couldn’t picture them. The couple on top of a wedding cake came to mind.

  Stacy tugged the locket from my hand and tucked it back under her shirt. She pressed her hand over it. At last she said, “It was for the best.” Her voice was mechanical. Her lips curled into a quick, grimacing smile.

  I leaned back in my seat and let out the breath I’d been holding. Amabel was adopted. And so Iris had followed Amabel, and Marina had taken her away, and Philip had lied, and the Senator had stepped in. Because everyone, except for me, had been thinking about Amabel.

  I felt exhausted. Scraped dry. The lie was so simple. If someone had only told me . . . I felt a phantom Ammy climb into my lap and pluck at my lips. Smile. Why are you being boring?

  I was resisting tears, but a hot liquid ran down my throat instead.

  33

  I drove, gripping the wheel with both hands. My lips were dry. I worried the cracks with my teeth. Stacy didn’t offer directions, and I was quickly lost, rambling down an access road on the outskirts of town. Desert stretched to the horizon, sand dusted with white gravel, cluttered with grayish scrub. Telephone poles relayed wires to nowhere. The road led to a shimmering pool of water, always receding as we approached.

  Now and then I glanced at Stacy’s profile. She chewed on her hair, her eyes rimmed with tears. Her shock at my knowledge of her baby seemed genuine. I didn’t think she knew Iris was after the Martins.

  A car emerged from the haze ahead of us. It was black and glossy, dazzling in the sun. It sped past, engine roaring.

  I watched in the rearview mirror until it disappeared.

  “I think we’re lost.”

  We retraced our steps down the long road, Stacy finally coming to life enough to gesture when I asked which way. Her house was almost a welcome sight. She let us in and moved quickly down the hall to Iris’s room. The little dog raced around her heels, yapping. I trailed behind, worried Iris was home.

  She wasn’t. Stacy dug through her nightstand and retrieved a baggy of pot and a blue glass pipe. A shower of dry specks spilled onto the carpet. She led us to the den, where she settled on the couch.

  We smoked, the noise of the TV drilling into my head. Stacy didn’t seem to hear it. I wasn’t used to smoking and coughed at the scorch in my lungs. Stacy smiled indulgently. Her hand kept traveling to her locket, fingernail tracing the seam.

  “I was her nanny,” I said at last. “Ama—Becky’s.”

  Her face jerked up and became eager.

  “She’s beautiful.” I looked at the ceiling. Fine cracks ran through the white paint like messy pencil lines. “She can already write her name. She loves to draw. Animals especially. Sunshines with smiles. She’s a happy kid.” I stopped, worried that would hurt Stacy’s feelings, but she nodded, encouraging me to go on. “She lives in a big house, really pretty, with a big backyard.” The pool appeared in my mind, afternoons in the blue water. I swallowed. Edited it out. “She loves riding horses. She’s growing fast. She’ll be tall.”

  “Do you have a picture?”

  I reached for my purse. I had a thousand photos on my phone. It was in my hand before I remembered it was new. The cheap plastic felt light in my hand, and absurdly, the lightness seemed to reflect its emptiness. My old phone had been heavy with photos, videos, a million silly ordinary moments. Even texts, sent from Philip’s phone, Amabel’s distinctive emojis: koalas, mermaids, random letters carefully punctuated with exclamation points.

  I hadn’t cared that the phone was broken. Now it felt like a fresh loss. I wiped my eyes.

  Stacy didn’t understand. She watched me with a concerned look.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any with me.”

  She slouched back, her automatic, polite smile more tragic than distress would have been.

  We sat in our own thoughts. Stacy snapped her locket open and shut.

  “Can I keep the picture you have?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what she meant.

  “The one of me in the yard. In the dress.”

  Something occurred to me. “You must have pictures, don’t you? Ultrasounds, pictures of the baby before you gave her up?”

  She shook her head. “It was private.”

  I leaned against the couch, and felt an unpleasant bit of knowledge slide into me like a bitter pill. Marina had broken my phone on purpose. She didn’t want me to have all those private pictures, all those memories. They were hers, she owned them.

  Iris’s threat was fresh in her mind, too. Exposure. She’d want to contain all evidence of Amabel within the family.

  “The woman who adopted the baby,” I said. “What do you remember about her?”

  “Mrs. Hughes,” she supplied, in that automatic voice she seemed to use about the baby. Like she’d been given a set of flashcards to memorize afterward, the official story.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What was she like?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She was nice.”

  I scowled at the useless adjective. “How did you know them?”

  She looked away. “My mom knew them. She said they were nice people. That they would make the baby happy.” She sounded guilty.

  She dipped her chin down so her hair hid her face. I imagined Amabel on Stacy’s lap, Amabel growing up in Verde, Ammy as Becky. Sticky-mouthed and bad-mannered and witness to difficulties Amabel never knew: lack of education, processed food, too much TV. Maybe limited by the inexperience of her parents and the whirlpool of their circumstances, but—maybe—alive.

  “You were brave to give her up,” I said.

  Stacy shrugged. She dug her foot between the couch cushions.

  “Will you tell me about it?” I said. “What happened?”

  She was intent on her toes as they worked into the upholstery.
“I was too young.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Everyone. Jeremy. Iris. They said I was stupid. So I stopped telling people. I kept it a secret.”

  “How long did that work?”

  “Until the summer.” She told me she was sunbathing in her backyard when her mom unexpectedly showed up—hungover, it sounded like, wearing last night’s slinky dress. Seeing Stacy’s stomach, stretching the waistband of her bikini, her mother flew into a rage. Their argument carried on the duration of three or four cigarettes, and then her mother left again, grabbing her purse, swearing that she was gonna take care of this.

  Stacy refused an abortion; by then it would have been late anyway. She was already five months along. Her mother should have noticed weeks earlier, but Stacy hid it carefully, draping herself in hooded sweatshirts or Jeremy’s old T-shirts. And I got the sense, anyway, that her mother wasn’t the noticing type.

  After the argument, Stacy’s mom was gone for days, a week, and Stacy assumed she was with her boyfriend, drinking, the usual routine. Instead, her mother came back with her hair newly cut and tinted auburn, a shiny professional job, unlike her usual at-home box dye. She wore unfamiliar clothes. A pencil skirt, a silky red blouse. Stacy asked if she got a new job. Her mother laughed. She said they were going on a little vacation, before the baby came. She helped Stacy pack a suitcase, and they drove, south, toward Tucson. They navigated into a suburb, dense with shopping malls and palms, everything nicer than Verde. They drove into a neighborhood of brand-new houses, pink and cream stucco, backyard swimming pools, boulevards heaped with black soil. But there wasn’t anyone around. For Sale signs marked most yards. The tennis court didn’t have a net. The recession was lingering like a bad cold, and developments were sitting empty all over Sun Valley. (Already, I was lining up Stacy’s words against what I knew: I’d heard of a Tucson town house, sold at a loss before I worked for the Martins.)

  Stacy’s mother pulled up to a pink house. She let them in with a key. Inside it was cool and smelled of paint. She led Stacy upstairs, into a bedroom with a plastic bag still over the mattress and tags hanging from the drapes. As she unpacked Stacy’s things, she explained that a nice family wanted to adopt the baby. Wasn’t that good news? Stacy was much too young to have a child. She couldn’t even imagine the work it would be, not to mention the expense. This was for the best.

  While Stacy was still reeling from the idea, the doorbell rang. Her mother made her change into a stiff dress that made her look like a little girl.

  As Stacy went down the stairs, a strange man and woman stood in the foyer. They watched her approach. Stacy couldn’t meet their eyes; they were too intense. They introduced themselves as the Hugheses, shaking Stacy’s hand, telling her mother how pretty she was, how healthy looking, as if Stacy were deaf. They moved to the living room, drank glasses of lemonade and carried on a conversation Stacy didn’t follow. All she knew was, they wanted her baby. Every time Mrs. Hughes’s eyes fell on her, they dropped to her belly. Her hands sometimes trailed over her own stomach, as if envious of Stacy’s plumpness.

  Finally, they left, taking with them their strange precise voices, as well as Stacy’s mother’s bizarre affectation.

  “Thank Christ they’re gone,” she told Stacy. “I’m dying for a cigarette. Don’t tell.” She smoked it in the backyard, dangling her legs in the swimming pool, oval-shaped and blue as a lozenge. She said, “You’ll be staying here awhile,” as if the information were casual, even enviable. “It’s comfortable, right?”

  “Alone?” Stacy asked.

  No. She’d have company. Her mother’s friend, a man Stacy had known, peripherally, for years. Clint.

  Clint was a lackadaisical caretaker. He went slouching out to the car and brought back food and rental movies and bottles of sunscreen. All Stacy did was lie beside the pool and eat. The summer reached its August peak and sloped into September, when the baby finally came. A midwife delivered her, a baby girl with tiny toes and perfect ears and waving fists. For a while, Stacy held her. The baby slept. Stacy traced her skin, her fine eyebrows, but then she drifted off to sleep with her cheek against her daughter’s wispy scalp. When she woke, the baby was gone.

  In days, Stacy was recovered enough to go home. Clint packed her things, and even drove her. By then, Stacy’s mother had gone away. The family home seemed stuffy and ugly, and very silent. Stacy began her lonely season. In the summer, her leisure had been purposeful. She was growing a baby. Now, the empty days only mirrored her emptiness. School was down the road, but she didn’t go back. Iris returned from L.A. to be with her, and the girls settled into their dreamy lives.

  Stacy’s muttered explanations were patchy in places, overly detailed in others, but between her lines I found I could imagine it clearly. How the Martins would have tucked her away, keeping her comfortable and concealed. How her mother, who sounded like an older version of Iris, managed to get rid of the baby and pick up some cash at once. How her sister swooped in, taking residence in the master bedroom, filling the closet with designer labels, carrying on a bored affair with Guy.

  Because no matter that Stacy hadn’t mentioned money, never mentioned money, it was obvious that they’d been paid. And when the money finally ran out, Iris wanted more.

  I was exhausted. The late-afternoon sun poured into the room, turning the air hot and thick as soup. I felt as if I’d been sitting on the sofa for hours. I stood unsteadily. Stacy’s head tilted in that curious look Amabel sometimes had. I put a hand over my eyes. I didn’t want Stacy’s face to invade my memories of Amabel.

  “I’m going to go.”

  Stacy startled. Maybe she expected something in return for her story. Photos of Ammy, or at least those of herself, pregnant, which rightfully belonged to her. Instead, I dug the envelope from my purse. I pulled out a stack of bills, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, and dropped them on the coffee table.

  Wide-eyed, Stacy leaned and pushed the stack off-kilter with a fingertip. The bills fanned out. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s from the family.” I tucked the envelope back in my purse while she gaped at me, astonished.

  “Really?”

  I mumbled, “Take care of yourself,” and fled down the hallway and out of the house, the smoky afternoon air sharp as smelling salts in my lungs.

  34

  Twenty miles south of Phoenix, the freeway clogged with the crush of evening traffic. Everyone in a hurry, because it was Friday night. A ball game was beginning downtown, and restaurants were opening their doors to let air-conditioning spin over the patio, and bartenders were pouring sacks of margarita mix over vats of crushed ice.

  The Martins spent their weekends like all the families in their circle. Occupying Amabel with carefully planned excursions, to the farmers market for locally grown strawberries, or to museums that taught scientific principles via clever toys, or children’s birthday parties with catered lunches. A normal, happy family.

  Amabel had been thoroughly a Martin, hadn’t she? Mirroring Marina with her haughtiness and charming self-absorption, her beauty. And, like Philip, outgoing, curious, a little bit sneaky. Enjoying her secrets. Her fibs.

  I wasn’t concentrating on driving. Changing lanes, I nearly collided with another car sliding into the same gap. Brake lights rippled down the road. I pulled off downtown. A few aggressive salesmen were hawking parking for $20. Everything was filling up. I still had the hotel tag dangling from my mirror and so I parked in that garage.

  I went into the hotel. Nobody stopped me from taking the elevator to our floor. I wandered the halls, trailing my fingers over the wallpaper. A busboy pushed a room service cart by me, silver lids rattling, and knocked at Marina’s room. A round bald man answered the door in his swimming suit.

  I tried to see past him, into the room where Marina had hidden Amabel from Iris. Of course by now it would be stripped of any evidence of them.

  I went up to the rooftop bar. Though it was happy hour the bar was almost empty;
the heat drove most people inside. But I wanted air on my skin, if only the dry breeze laced with dust. The bartender made my vodka tonic strong and retreated to the stripe of shade under the awning. The garnish tray made me hungry—cucumbers, cherries, oranges, lemons, limes, the color palette of Amabel’s doll clothes.

  Amabel Martin, adopted. From a little distance, it wasn’t so bad. Stacy gave her a lovely face, the Martins gave her a lovely life. Maybe it hadn’t been a secret at all. Perhaps a small, intimate circle knew about the adoption, but it was tacitly unspoken. The Martins were private people, after all.

  But something gave Iris power over them. Otherwise her threat would be useless. They’d sue her, get a restraining order.

  My phone lit up with a text from Bryant. Dinner?

  I motioned to the bartender, and he brought me another drink. I asked for a few maraschino cherries, too, and he plopped them into my glass. Ammy had loved Shirley Temples, juice down her chin.

  I wrote back, Sorry, going out with some friends. Then I turned off my phone.

  The sky was beginning to pink, the light to turn syrupy. It would be a beautiful sunset in Ocotillo Heights. Marina had designed the house with a family in mind—the nursery, bath, and playroom running in a row. I imagined her readying the rooms for the baby, selecting the wallpaper with its evocative birch forests, the toxin-free wood furnishings, the Scandinavian textiles.

  Marina and Philip would have driven south to collect Amabel, car seat pinned in the back, a bag of tiny clothes and cloth diapers and organic products ready to go. They’d have been momentarily stunned by the presence of the baby in their quiet twosome. Then weeks, months, of sleepless nights and bleary days, of feeding and changing and cleaning and calming, of first smiles and laughs. Amabel’s cornflower eyes recognizing their faces, latching on and lighting up. It wouldn’t have taken long for her to feel like their own. As if Stacy had never existed.

  What about Clint?

  When I emptied my glass, I was a little unsteady. I needed some dinner. I needed to decide where to go next.