Girl in the Rearview Mirror Page 6

  Their house appeared in Dwell after they built it, ten years ago. It was a stout white bunker from the front and a sheer, sparkling ice cube on the other sides. Tiered succulent gardens ascended the front yard; at the top, a tree with olive green branches and silvery leaves stood in elegant silhouette before the blue front door.

  Inside, the rooms were boxes of light. Marina’s aesthetic was warmed-up minimalism with global touches. In the living room, whitewashed bones and tribal masks hung over a white sofa with slim silver legs. In the kitchen, reclaimed wood from church pews in India topped the table, while domed overhead lights recalled an operating room. The Dwell spread showcased a younger Marina, hair extravagantly long down her back, rinsing a bowl of lemons in the sink, lighting the fireplace with a long match, gazing at the pool from a balcony, the living room curtains billowing like skirts.

  I parked in my usual spot in the driveway. Landscapers were pruning the citrus trees in the side yard, releasing a smell of lemon Pledge. I punched in the garage code, hung my purse in the laundry room, kicked on the slippers I kept there.

  In the kitchen, Amabel sat with her stuffed cocker spaniel, Patrick, wearing her princess nightgown and drinking a glass of milk. Marina clattered in heels from fridge to blender, shaking a green smoothie into a jar, talking nonstop, don’t forget the check for the stables, could you work late next week, we need to set up a playdate with Tonya.

  “The playdate is Tuesday. And I’m totally available next week.” I kissed the top of Amabel’s head. “How you doin’, Ammy?”

  “She might have a bug. Feel how warm she is? Lay low today. Call me if it gets worse. That camp is a germ factory.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. We’ll have a movie day.”

  “You’re the best! I’m out the door!” Marina bent to give Amabel an air kiss.

  I sliced an apple while the espresso machine warmed up. When I asked Amabel if she wanted to foam the milk, she shrugged. Her workbooks were stacked on the table, which I took to mean Marina expected her to do them regardless of the bug.

  Every six months or so, Marina took Amabel to a child development specialist. I’d come across the reports by accident, when I was looking through the file cabinet for Ammy’s vaccination records. I flipped through the doctor’s notes, righteous and incredulous. Her latest review indicated strong results on communication and fine motor skills, but a below-average attention span. Now we did exercises out of a concentration workbook every morning.

  After we finished our page, I set up a movie in the playroom. Amabel settled into a beanbag with Patrick, so sleepy she seemed about to suck her thumb.

  The doorbell chimed once, and again a few seconds later.

  “Eva must not be here yet,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  The stairs were sharp-edged and slick, not easy to hurry down. The bell rang impatiently, three, four times.

  Muttering, I swung open the door.

  Iris was on the other side, thumb pressed to the bell.

  I froze, and she rushed by me into the house, trailing perfume like sticky candy. She wheeled in the foyer, taking it in. Soaring ceiling, curving staircase, light fixture like a hundred slashing raindrops frozen midflight. She was a frenzy of color, red hair, yellow dress, blue heels. She tottered to a console table that always held an elaborate floral arrangement—today peonies, pure white—and crushed a flower between her fingers. “Are these real?” Petals showered to the floor.

  Once, a bird flew into my apartment. Soared through the patio door and crashed into a mirror. Dazed, it flapped wildly, a panicked dervish of feathers and fear. I’d stood paralyzed, hands gathered to my chest, as if I might be hurt. The bird hit the ceiling fan with a horrible thump and dropped to the floor.

  I dropped my hands. “Iris? What are you doing here?”

  She threw me a defiant glare. “Are they home? I know he isn’t, but is she?”

  “Who do you mean?” I thought of Amabel upstairs, snuggled into her beanbag.

  “Her. The wife.” Iris spat the words like hunks of gristle. Her heels grated on the floor. A clump of peonies still in her hand.

  The fear that Amabel might hear made me do the opposite of what I wanted. I took Iris by the wrist and pulled her farther inside, away from the staircase, into the living room.

  She strutted to the windows over the backyard. The pool sparkled on the deck. “Does anyone swim out there?” Her nose touched the glass.

  I crossed my arms. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Look at this place.” Her voice was harsh and dismissive, but she was obviously envious. Her eyes darted over everything. The white rug, the marble fireplace. The only color in the room was a Saarinen womb chair, siren red. An enormous canvas hung over the couch, white with a white rectangle in one corner, the exact shade as the canvas, yet it appeared to hover over it. Iris, seemingly mesmerized, touched it.

  “There’s a security system,” I warned. “I could call the police.”

  Her hand snapped back. “Don’t.” She bit her lip, tears in her voice.

  The alarm was over the light switch; I could reach it from where I stood. But I didn’t. I was curious, I realized. I wanted very badly to know who she was. Amabel was safely upstairs. The Martins weren’t due home all day.

  “Will you sit down?” I said.

  She covered her face. “Oh, God. What am I doing? Shit!”

  “Quiet,” I said sharply. “Sit. Please.”

  “You must think I’m insane.” She perched on the couch, her knees bouncing, jittery. “I just needed to see where he lived. I could never picture it, his house. His stuff.” She pressed her hands into the upholstery. “I pictured him living in a hotel. She picked this out, right? He wouldn’t do anything like this.”

  I straightened my shoulders, imagined myself as Marina. Calm, cool, superior. “Why are you following me?”

  She gasped. “I’m not—”

  “You knew you wouldn’t find Philip or Marina here this morning. Or at school.”

  She mumbled into her lap.

  “Excuse me?”

  She looked up. Her face was wet. “He has a daughter. He has a family. I knew it but I never really knew it.”

  Alarm lifted its wings in my stomach. She made the pronoun sound as intimate as a nickname.

  She pulled a pillow into her lap, tortured its embroidery with black fingernails. “I thought it would be easier to accept if I saw.”

  I gripped the back of the red chair, my palms damp. “You knew he had a daughter. You’ve seen her.”

  “You didn’t tell them about me. Did you?” Iris dropped the pillow and stood. Relaxed suddenly, as if she’d won some concession. She opened an ivory box on the mantel and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and matches, smoothly, as if she knew they’d be there. “He hides them at work, too. She must be strict. It doesn’t pay to be strict. They do whatever they want anyway.”

  The match didn’t light off the pack so she pulled it between her nails. The spark sizzled. Exhaling smoke into Marina’s purified air, Iris sat and stretched an arm over the back of the couch.

  I nudged a shallow ceramic pot across the coffee table toward her. Not an ashtray, but it would do. I wasn’t about to leave her alone for a minute.

  “They have weird taste. I’ve only seen the restaurant and that’s . . .” She tilted her hand: so-so. “It doesn’t really seem Italian.” She flicked ashes in the general direction of the dish.

  Her abrupt shift from tears to bluster unsettled me. Her voice was gossipy, as if I’d lean in eagerly to hear more. I remembered once Bryant had told me to be careful: the Martins brought out strange reactions in people. Just knowing a Martin made some people think they deserved something.

  “So you know Philip from the restaurant?”

  Iris nodded. “I thought you might recognize me. I didn’t work there very long.” Another drag and she crushed the cigarette out. “I’ve been trying to quit, but it’s hard. I’m so anxious lately, smoking is
the only thing that calms me down.” She clamped her hands between her knees. “I can’t sleep.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, cutting off her dramatic, breathy voice. “What do you want?”

  She shook her head. “You know. You knew the other day, when I saw you with the little girl. The way you looked at me . . . you knew.” She bit her lip, watching me closely, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, she said, “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant, and it’s his.”

  My laugh was as involuntary and harsh as a cough. “You can’t be. You must weigh one hundred pounds.”

  She rested her hands on her flat stomach. Her nail polish was chipped and gnawed. “I’ve been to the doctor. I’m seven weeks along.” Her mascara had blurred down her cheeks. “What should I do?”

  It was my turn to go to the windows. String lights hung over the patio from a dinner party last week. Marina had worn a lime dress, Philip a white polo; she’d fussed over his collar. I’d stayed to watch Amabel and was reading in the guest room when they came upstairs. Marina whispered something I couldn’t catch, and Philip replied that he wasn’t tired and was going to the poolroom for a bit. She’d gone into the bedroom alone, and after an hour or so, the light under the door had gone out.

  Iris set a cold hand on my wrist. “I don’t know what to do. He won’t talk to me.”

  She was so gaudy, so emotional. I couldn’t imagine Philip attracted to her—even tolerating her.

  I couldn’t look at her. “If you’re telling the truth, how can he not talk to you? You must have some sort of relationship.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “It’s none of my business. I’m not sure why you’re even telling me all this.”

  “I love him. I thought you’d understand.”

  Anger swelled in my veins, and I slapped her. I’d never hit anyone before. It was more of a rough tap across her cheek and mouth. Lipstick came off on my hand.

  She blinked, startled, and then began giggling. I tried to hush her, but she doubled over, giddy, gasping, shaking. Collapsed in my arms, her body was warm and sharp. She was taller than me, and I struggled to brace her. Touching her bare, bony back felt queasily intimate.

  The garage door rumbled.

  Iris snapped up. Her face was splotched red. “Shit!” She grabbed the ashtray and shook it into the fireplace. Ashes dusted the floor.

  “You have to go.” I ushered her out of the living room, toward the foyer. I could hear someone coming in through the kitchen.

  “Is it her?”

  “It’s probably the housekeeper.” But I was nearly jogging, tugging her along.

  Petals were still strewn across the foyer floor. There was no sound from Amabel upstairs. We went out the front door. To my relief, it was only Eva. Her car was parked at the top of the driveway, and she’d gone in through the garage, as usual.

  Iris had parked on the street. She drove a silver sedan, similar to mine, but with a white panel over the hood, obviously a cheap fix for a collision. I was surprised. Her clothes looked expensive.

  “I want to give you something.” She reached into the glove compartment and withdrew an envelope. She shook it at me. “Open it.”

  I glanced back at the house. Was that a face in a window, watching us? “I have to get back to work.”

  She yanked a picture from the envelope and held it in front of my face, so close I couldn’t see it.

  I took it. It was an ultrasound. The cartoonish outline of a guppy body, a patchy constellation in a galaxy of dots and smudges.

  “There’s the head.” She traced it. “And a little fist.”

  “You need to leave.”

  “You really don’t want to believe me.” She was amused again.

  “He has a family. Remember?”

  Her smile faltered. She chewed a lip. “He talks about you.”

  My chest rushed like a sail caught in the wind. Pleasure so startling I had to suspect it. She was flattering me.

  I still held the ultrasound, shiny paper catching the sun. Maybe it would melt in the heat. Vanish.

  “Meet me later. Please? Just once. I need to talk to someone who knows him.”

  Later, as I set up the air purifier in the living room and Windexed the smudge her nose had left on the window, I realized I could be fired. Easily. I’d talked about the family’s private business with a stranger. Let her into the house. Left Amabel alone.

  Iris had begged for my phone number. She wouldn’t leave without it.

  Seven weeks pregnant, Philip the father. This lodged in my head like a jingle. It wouldn’t be so unusual, really. The Martins’ parties buzzed with gossip over affairs, separations, messy divorces. Of course, if Philip and Marina split, the Senator might suffer in the fallout. His hope of a legacy for Philip could be lost.

  As Iris drove away, arm hanging out the window, cigarette smoke streaming, I’d felt sticky with dread.

  In the playroom, Amabel sprawled on her stomach. She kicked a heel at me in greeting. I felt her for a fever, and she squirmed away.

  My phone buzzed. Iris already, asking me to meet her for dinner.

  I sank into the beanbag chair. The Little Mermaid had become human and was brushing her hair with a fork. Seven weeks pregnant . . .

  Restless, I went downstairs to check the house again. Everything was back to normal. In the kitchen, Eva unloaded groceries. She was a small woman, plump and neat as a sparrow. She turned to say hello. “Beautiful day. You two should get outside before it’s very hot.”

  I stretched over the counter. The cool marble kissed my skin. “Amabel’s not feeling well.”

  Eva made a sympathetic face without pausing in her methodical work. She could somehow lift a gallon of milk and two Greek yogurt bins into the fridge all at once. A case of Diet Coke, frozen spinach for Marina’s smoothies, parsley she propped into a glass. She frowned at me as she took the garbage out, obviously wondering why I was staring. But she didn’t say anything.

  When she returned to scrub her hands at the sink, I said, “I had a friend drop by this morning. She was only here a few minutes. I’m just mentioning it in case you saw her car outside and wondered.”

  She glanced at me over her shoulder. Her brown eyes were inscrutable. “I didn’t notice. You finished?” She swept a water glass marked with my lip gloss into the dishwasher.

  No matter what she’d seen, Eva wouldn’t tell the Martins. I envied her aloofness. She was distant even as she wiped the Martins’ plates, cleaned their toilets, picked up their prescriptions.

  “All set—yes? See you Monday.”

  On her way out, she passed my shoes in the mudroom, my purse on the hook, my swimming suit pinned to dry beside Amabel’s.

  As I drove out of Ocotillo Heights that evening, I passed Philip heading home. He saluted me. My car veered from its lane as I stared. Sunglasses, white collared shirt, probably classic rock on the stereo. Everything as usual. He’d never seemed so remote.

  8

  Iris stood outside the restaurant, balancing on the curb. When she saw me, she tossed her cigarette, accidentally dropping her cell phone along with it. “Shit.” The case was bedazzled in pink crystals, and several had broken off onto the blacktop. She squatted to collect them. “I was never clumsy—before.” Her eyes slid away from mine. She’d piled her hair in a bun on top of her head and changed into yoga pants and an oversized tunic, as if to conceal a swollen stomach.

  She’d suggested a Chinese restaurant that smelled of bleach and orange chicken. She expertly slid her tray along the buffet, piling her plate and stashing a fistful of soy sauce packets into her purse. I was embarrassed, but the cashier was watching the doors as though willing customers to enter. The red vinyl booths were empty.

  At our table, Iris crushed a fortune cookie in her fist and salvaged the paper from the crumbs. “‘A journey is more than its steps.’ Funny, huh?” She ate quickly, spilling rice over the tablecloth. “God, I’m starving. I’ve been driving around
all day.”

  The broccoli stems were tough. I sliced them with a tarnished knife, relieved for an excuse not to eat.

  “Listen. I feel bad about this morning. I shouldn’t have come over like that.”

  “No,” I agreed. I stared past her, at a mural on the opposite wall. Robed figures wandered among mountains, pagodas, and dragons. Kites hung from the ceiling, strings shining in the slanting afternoon light. Kitschy, but pretty. Like Iris.

  She didn’t seem eager to meet my eye, either. “I wanted to see how they lived.”

  “They’re happy there,” I said, though that wasn’t quite accurate. Successful would be a better word. “Like you said, they’re a family. They have a daughter.”

  A vein flickered down her temple, and she looked furious. But just as quickly, her face smoothed into an artificial calm, lips drawn into a pout. “I’m going to have a baby, too. What about that?” Her voice was sugared. She frightened me.

  “I need water.” I went to the soda machine, found a tray of glasses still warm from the dishwasher. I filled one and drank, shards of ice rushing to my teeth.

  Iris followed. “You should have taken soda. They never check.” She helped herself to Diet Coke, plucking a lemon from a plastic dish with her fingers.

  “How did you even meet him?” I asked, incredulous, but she squeezed my wrist gratefully.

  “I’ve been dying to tell someone.”

  We returned to our plates, hers wiped clean, mine barely touched. She leaned across the table conspiratorially as she spoke.

  She’d been hunting for a job as a waitress. At The Grove, she handed an application to the bartender, and a man in a suit called out from a booth, “I’ll take this one.”

  Philip led her up to his lonely office. At first, she didn’t think anything of him—a middle-aged guy, pretty wife, cute kid (he kept a framed snapshot on the desk). He said he liked her face and gave her the job.

  During lulls, Philip taught her things. How to pronounce the menu items in Italian, pour wine without spilling, wipe glasses with newspaper for the clearest finish. He name-dropped famous diners, unlocked the cabinet with the most expensive bottles of wine. Iris rushed to explain that he wasn’t showing off the money behind everything, but his expertise, his knowledge.