“Just do your own thing, and don’t interfere with me,” she said sharply.
“All right. Maybe this was a mistake,” I said, looking at my salad.
She was silent, and then she reached for my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s not a mistake. You’ll be all right. You’ll finish school, go to college, and marry a millionaire.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “I don’t want to marry a millionaire. I want to marry someone I love, just like Mama did.”
“Okay. Here’s to that,” she said, raising her glass of white wine. “We all need some fantasy, I guess.”
I looked at her, still feeling fury inside me. Maybe I would soon get to understand exactly how she had gotten so under Papa’s skin that he could throw her out.
“And what’s your fantasy, Roxy?”
She thought a moment and shook her head. “I’ve run out of them,” she said. Then she surprised me with a smile. “Maybe you’ll bring some back.”
I wasn’t particularly in the mood for fantasies, either. Reality was a bully. It shoved and pushed its way into your mind, driving rainbow dreams down or out. Dared I think of what my future would be now? Did ambition matter? When would I think about romance again? Roxy had this lovemaking hideaway, the most beautiful dresses, the most expensive perfumes, probably the best hairstylists in the city, but it all seemed more like ways to trap and entice and had nothing to do with love and romance. Did I dare ask her if she had someone special, ever dreamed of someone special or wanted someone special? What did she see as her future? How long could this go on?
I returned to my room to finish up organizing my things. Soon after, I heard the door buzzer again and listened at the door. It was a woman. She had an English accent. A moment later, I heard footsteps coming my way and stepped back from the door. Roxy opened it, and she and a woman who looked about fifty but was probably older stepped in. She was a few inches taller than Roxy and had her light blond hair parted in the middle and curled at her neck. The most striking feature of her face was her crystal-blue eyes. There probably wasn’t a more perfect nose on any woman in the city. I thought her lips were recently injected with Botox. Actually, she looked like someone who had a plastic surgeon on call. If she looked in the mirror and saw something she didn’t like, she picked up the phone and left the house immediately.
“This is M,” Roxy said. “M, this is Mrs. Brittany.”
I said hello, but she didn’t reply. Instead, she walked in farther and looked me over the way I imagined Southern slave owners at a slave auction looked over new Africans brought into the country.
“With a little work, she could be prettier than you,” Mrs. Brittany said.
I glanced at Roxy and thought I saw fear ripple through her face.
“She’s only fifteen,” Roxy said.
“You weren’t much older,” Mrs. Brittany replied quickly. Roxy forced a smile.
“I was much, much different,” she said.
“Maybe. In my experience, we never know what lies under a young girl’s skin. Are you sexually active?” she asked me.
“What? No.”
She looked surprised and smiled skeptically. Then she grew serious again. “Sorry about your mother. I understand you have horrible relatives.”
“Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been difficult to leave them on the Titanic,” I replied, and she laughed.
Her laugh was deep, more like a rumbling in her chest. Now that she was closer to me, I saw the small birthmark on the bottom left of her chin and the strands of hair with gray roots beginning to expose themselves. Her face was tight, plastic-surgery tight, so that her smile seemed more like a folding than a relaxed movement in her cheeks and lips. How old was she? I wondered.
“Okay. We don’t want to send you back on the Titanic. You can stay here with Roxy, but you will have to obey the rules your sister and I have set down.”
“I know. I’m not going to cause any trouble. I know how to keep to myself,” I said.
She tilted her head, gave me an appreciative smile, and looked at Roxy. “I’m surprised you didn’t talk more about her.”
I looked at Roxy, too, to see what her answer would be.
“You knew my memories of my family were painful, Mrs. Brittany. If anyone knew, you did. I wasn’t about to talk about anyone.”
“Yes. Well, let’s see how it goes.” She stared at me again and then smiled. “If she stays looking this young, she could be our Lolita. I get a lot of calls for a Lolita these days, you know. The older men get, the more they look to youth. There’s nothing a man fears more than losing his erection, and most of these men have wives who could discourage the most psychotic rapist. Youth is a valuable commodity. It always has been and always will be.”
“She’s going to college, Mrs. Brittany. She’s got a good inheritance coming. She’s far from the state I was in at her age.?
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