Prologue
Hannah's Story
.
I have always felt like someone with a pimple
on the tip of her nose because my last name is different from my mother's. First you try to cover it up, and then, when you can no longer do that, you pretend it's nothing and act as if it certainly doesn't bother you.
I have my father's last name. Eaton, and my mother. Willow, who remarried a year after I was born, has my stepfather's last name. Fuentes. My father, who is an important and successful Palm Beach attorney, has always refused to permit my stepfather to legally adopt me and thus take on his name, even though my daddy, too, remarried a year after I was born and has twin boys, now fifteen years old. Adrian and Cade.
The irony about all this is my Eaton paternal grandparents have never had anything to do with me. Neither has my aunt Whitley, my father's sister, or her children, my cousins Quentin and Laurel, both of whom have their own families. I have seen my Eaton grandparents, my aunt, and her husband Hans, only from a distance. and I know they have seen me from time to time, but they have never acknowledged me. Once I saw Quentin. but I've never seen his family. and I've never seen Laurel or any of her family. Even when I was very young, it didn't take me long to realize the Eatons built a wall around themselves, so they were the castle-keeps, especially in regard to me.
Whenever I've been with my father. I've also been with Adrian and Cade. but I'm not very fond of my half brothers, who suffer from 100 percent snobquotient. I won't deny that they are very good-looking and very good students, but they love reminding people of that, especially me. Even though I'm just as good a student as either of them, they often try to make me feel inferior by bragging about how much more they have or how many more friends they have. They have what they call their "Invite Board" in their game room, and they pin up their party invitations on it. They love showing it to me, especially when almost every available space is taken.
My father's second wife. Danielle, is polite and nice enough to me. but I've always thought she was afraid to be much more. She gives only about a 70 percent smile and stops short whenever she is about to invite me to do something or .give me something that might somehow seem to be extra and above what is absolutely necessary. Perhaps she thinks my brothers would be jealous. I'm sure they would be.
Danielle is pretty with doll-like features. My father met her on one of his trips to France. She was working for a travel agency. All I know is they had a whirlwind romance, and she became pregnant almost the day they were married. She always seems quite overwhelmed by her twin boys. I've caught her looking at them with an expression of astonishment on her face after something they said or did, making me think she was wondering how two such conflicting and explosive personalities were ever a part of her. I've even heard her jokingly say that they kicked so hard in her womb, she was afraid they would induce labor.
Mommy calls Danielle my father's "trinket wife." She says he has a charm bracelet with pictures of all his past trinkets, with Mommy excluded, of course. I know that's not true. and I know that Mommy doesn't really believe it, but she likes to say things like that about him. There is what I would best describe as a shaky truce between my mother and father. and I walk the tightrope between them afraid to say one nice thing about either to either for fear their anger and disappointment will shake the around I'm on, causing me to fall off and then lose them bath.
The only family I really have is what I call my "stepfamily," the Fuentes. They have never made me feel like anything less than a member of their family, making sure to always melude me in their celebrations and events. I expect there is really a word in the dictionary like step-family, but the word is in my own private dictionary along with ,snob-quotient and nongrandma and nongrandpa, which is what my father's parents Bunny and Asher Eaton are to me. I suppose I could call the Eatons my nonfamily.
I do have some family on my mother's side: an uncle, my mother's half brother. Linden. He lives in a residency in the Boca Raton area, in what my mother terms an "intermediary home." He's spent years and years in a very controlled environment, a mental health clinic, and he's not quite ready to be on his own in the outside world. She never says it, but she doesn't have to say it. She knows I know she doesn't believe he will ever be quite ready. So it's not really an "intermediate place" for Linden: it's a dead end. No matter how deeply set his problems are, however, my uncle Linden loves me very much and I love him.
My father is always warning me about Uncle Linden and telling me things like "Insanity runs like an underground sewer through that family bloodline," which makes me wonder if he doesn't think I have the mental pollution in me as well. His parents, his sister, and even his children certainly treat me as if I do. Sometimes I get the impression that Adrian and Cade think I'm going to break out in mad babbling or stick my finger in an electric socket, (They would love that.) I know they deliberately do things, tease and shock me with their words and behavior, in the hope that they will bring on a seizure of madness. There is always that slight pause, that hesitation of
anticipation, waiting for my reactions. I try to ignore them, but sometimes it's like pretending a mosquito hasn't landed on your arm.
My stepfather. Miguel, who is a psychology professor and was even once my mother's teacher, told me that it's my father's family that has the mental problems. I told him that doesn't help me because in either case, I might be inheriting it.
Not this kind of mental illness. Hannah." he replied. "This kind is home grown in Palm Beach. You can't inherit it. You have to wander into those gardens to contact that sort of poison ivy, and thankfully, your mother keeps you out of those gardens."
We both laughed at that, me not so much because Mother was keeping me out of that world, but because that world wasn't inviting me to enter. Whenever I walked down Worth Avenue with Mommy, I felt we were both invisible. People who knew who we were seemed too terrified to look at us for more than a split second. Maybe they thought they would be turned into pillars of salt, or if they smiled at us, no one would ever again smile at them. This was especially true about snobby salespeople in the better Palm Beach stores, who often made us wait or even ignored us for as long as they could or until Mommy put herself aggressively in their faces.
"When I tell you these things about Palm Beach, it's not a case of the fox and the grapes. Hannah," my stepfather insisted. 'Believe me. You don't want to be part of that social scene. It's cannibalistic. They eat each other for breakfast.
"Pass me that child from Coconut Row, or can I have a piece of that young man from Esplanade Way, please?" he added, pretending to be seated at some Palm Beach fancy restaurant. We both roared with laughter.
I really love my stepfather as much as anyone would love a natural father, maybe even more than I love mine. I know my father thinks I do. Whenever he sees me wearing something new, especially a ring or a bracelet, he always says. "I see your mother's Cuban lover is trying to buy your love again with some cheap imitation jewelry."
I always want to say, "He's not her Cuban lover. He's her husband, and this isn't cheap imitation jewelry," but if I defend Miguel too vigorously, it only convinces Daddy he's right, so I usually pretend I don't hear him. More often than not, when I am with either my mother or my father. I feel like I am floundering in the world of jealous adult quicksand. A critical glance, a sarcastic word, even an innocent question can pull me down into their swampy underworld full of green-eyed monsters.
It's better for me to say nothing, to look bored and disinterested. Both take it as a sign of agreement, and I think that's all right. Let them believe w
hat they need to believe. Little silences are like antimissiles I use to keep all the missiles of unhappiness from striking my heart.