If and when that happened, I was sure I would be able to see it in his face immediately. It would certainly be there if he found out my secret plan to spy on Roxy. Why would I want to know anything about such a sister? What did this say about me? Would he now definitely believe that I was more like her than he had hoped or expected? And how would my mother react? Would she blame me for bringing such unhappiness back into our small family? I would no longer be their fille parfaite. Why would I risk all of this just to spy on Roxy? What was the attraction, the fascination? Why didn’t I despise her for doing what she had done to both of them?
However, no matter what they pretended, deep in my heart, I knew that even they, even my father, wanted to know more about her. No matter what you said or did, you really couldn’t wash your hands completely of your child. Blood was too strong. I was convinced that she lived in Papa’s dreams and even his nightmares. In his heart of hearts, he didn’t want to see bad things happen to her and wished that there was some way to bring her back.
“Maybe Kelli Fisher will study with us,” I told Papa, hoping to make my alibi more credible. “She’s a good student, too. Her twin brother, Carson, might come along,” I added nonchalantly, just to make it all seem more truthful.
He nodded but kept his eyes so fixed on me that even if I weren’t lying, I’d inevitably act as if I were. However, he was thinking about something else.
“You like this boy?”
“He’s all right,” I said, which was a girl’s code for “Ugh!” Papa didn’t know that, of course.
“What’s ‘all right’ mean?”
“No second look,” I said. “And barely a first.”
Mama laughed, but Papa kept his military-serious expression. “I hope your mother has done a good job of explaining the minefields out there when it comes to sex, Emmie.”
“Oh, Norton,” Mama said.
“You know, I don’t go for this false modesty when it comes to training your children, Vivian. We just have to look to your sister, Manon, for a good example of what result that can have,” he said sharply. Like his father and his father’s father, he could swing words like a machete.
Because Papa avoided mentioning Roxy and therefore using her as the example of what not to be, he relied heavily on the story of Mama’s sister, Manon, who got pregnant at sixteen and married a much older man, a friend of her young uncle. Mama would counter with the fact that they were still married and had a nice family.
“Only you French can pretend not to see what’s on your right and left flanks,” Papa told her. “Yves or Leaves or whatever he calls himself is surely out there pollinating other jeunes filles. It takes only one foolish time,” Papa warned me. “You go a little bit farther and farther out on this weak branch until it snaps and drops you in one pool of muck. That’s what teenagers frolicking in sex do, swim in muck.”
Although he didn’t add them, I could hear the words, Just ask your sister.
“Norton, s’il vous plaît,” Mama pleaded.
He gave me one more look of warning and returned to his breakfast.
I had yet to bring a boy home to meet my parents, because I was terrified of how Papa would make him feel. It would surely be like a CIA interrogation. I once told Chastity that my father would probably water-board any boy I had been out with more than once, let alone twice.
And all because of Roxy!
Under these circumstances, who wouldn’t expect me to be more and more interested in whom and what she had turned out to be? I had every reason to hate her. Look how she was affecting my life. She was like someone who had died but wouldn’t stay buried. She could be thousands of miles away, not only blocks away, but it wouldn’t matter. Papa would always look past whatever I had done to see if Roxy had a hand in it, if her influence was in my blood. There were many nights when I raged to myself about it. I wouldn’t dare rage at Papa, but I could mutter and think my protest aloud when I was alone.
“If you’re going to forget her, Papa, forget her. Don’t keep looking in me to find her! And don’t deny that you do!”
I even imagined his guilty, remorseful face, but none of this fantasizing helped to make it easier.
I would look out my bedroom window at the street below whenever I had these thoughts. I could see the corner from where I stood. I knew Roxy was just a little north of us.
“Why didn’t you go farther away?” I whispered. “Did you stay here just to spite Papa? Or did you stay close because you were sorry and really do miss us?
“I’m going to know the answers to all of my questions about you, Roxy. I swear. I’m going to force you to look at me. And I’m going to make you do what I have done too often because of you.
“I’m going to make you cry.”
2
“We’re going to do it today,” I told Chastity as soon as I met her in the school hallway.
As usual, she was walking with her head down, not expec
ting anyone else to say hi. When she heard me, she looked up quickly and twisted her thin lips so hard I thought either the upper or the lower would snap like a rubber band. Her facial features were too small for her round, chubby face. She had nice mocha-brown eyes, but her lazy lids were habitually narrowed, giving the impression that she was falling asleep, even while walking. She had naturally curly light brown hair, which in her case was a disadvantage, because it almost always looked like a nest made by a drunken rat.
“Yeah, right,” she said. I couldn’t blame her for her skepticism. Three times this week alone, I had said so but backed out before the school day ended.