Girl Who Never Was Page 3

  “How was Salem, dear?” Aunt Virtue asks me vaguely, because they are focused on other things. Mainly, the arrangement of the furniture. They are always convinced that the furniture is being moved on them—tiny, infinitesimal adjustments in its angles. They blame gnomes. This is the kind of life I lead: my aunts are genuinely convinced gnomes are real, as real a plague on Beacon Hill as the mice and rats are.

  “Fine,” I answer.

  I’m not even sure they hear me.

  “Insufferable gnomes!” curses Aunt True as Aunt Virtue tips a picture frame an unseeable amount of space to the left. She is standing tiptoe on top of a pink-and-gilt Queen Anne chair to do this. The house is an odd combination of styles, and I always assumed it was inherited from generations of Stewarts past. Now I wonder if Aunt True and Aunt Virtue have been collecting through the centuries.

  This is madness, I think. I’m losing my mind.

  “It looks better,” Aunt True tells Aunt Virtue, and Aunt Virtue leaps down from the Queen Anne chair with a nimbleness that belies her age.

  “Damnable gnomes,” says Aunt Virtue, stepping back so she can study the picture for herself.

  Aunt True nods in firm agreement. “Come now,” she says. “I do believe they pushed the chaise lounge a bit to the left in the conservatory.”

  I watch them march down the hallway to the conservatory. I swallow trepidation and follow them. I love my aunts, of course I do, but sometimes I feel like, even though they’ve raised me from infancy, they have no idea what to make of me. They look at me sometimes like I’m not what they expected, but other times they look at me like I’m exactly what they expected. Either way, I feel like they’re not sure how they feel about who I’ve turned out to be. I always feel loved, but there is usually an undercurrent of something like dread too. I have no idea why, but the dread has infected me. They are afraid for me, and to me it seems like more than the worry of other people’s parents; it is genuine fright. So I always try not to say anything that might alarm them, but now I find that I just have to. There are too many questions welling up inside of me.

  “How long have there been Stewarts in Boston?” I ask.

  “Forever,” answers Aunt True absently.

  “Look at this chaise lounge,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “Oh, they have definitely been at this chaise lounge,” agrees Aunt True.

  I watch them nudge the chaise lounge a hairsbreadth to the left.

  “Do you know anything about them?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  Suddenly, I am the center of both aunts’ attention. They are still leaned over the chaise lounge but their gazes are sharp on me.

  “Know anything about whom?” asks Aunt True shrewdly.

  “The Stewarts who settled Boston,” I clarify.

  There is a long moment of silence. My aunts slowly straighten, still looking at me closely. I want to fidget. I feel like I have asked something I should never have asked, but I don’t know why.

  “What about them?” Aunt Virtue asks carefully.

  What were their names? I want to ask. But somehow the words stick in my throat. I can’t make myself say them. My aunts’ dark eyes, full of love and that terrifying dread, are steady on me. I can see them willing me to drop the entire thing. But I can’t. I can’t drop all of it. There is so little I know about myself, and I feel like my aunts will never want me to ask any of the questions I have.

  “What about my mother?” I persist almost desperately.

  “What about her?” demands Aunt True, a challenge being flung to me. Ask another question.

  “Who was she? Did you know her? Where did she come from? Why can’t I find any other Blaxtons?”

  “Have you been looking for them?” asks Aunt True.

  “You need to stop looking for them,” commands Aunt Virtue.

  “Do you understand how hard it is for me to know nothing about her? She’s my mother,” I cry, trying to make them see.

  “It means nothing,” Aunt Virtue says staunchly. “She was never supposed to be here. She did not belong here. You are one of us: a Stewart of Boston. We who have been here from the beginning and will be here to the end. This is your home, we are yours, and you are ours. It matters not what anyone else may say, what words may be used on you. You are a Stewart of Boston. Remember that.”

  “I know that,” I say. “I won’t…run away. I’m not trying to—”

  “Are you unhappy?” Aunt True asks me gently.

  “No,” I say honestly. “I’m not.”

  “Then forget about your mother,” she says, still in that tender, loving tone of voice. She walks over to me and cups a hand on my cheek. “This is your life. This. This time, this place, this world.” Her words are strangely firm, as if, by pronouncing them so clearly, she can make it be this way, make me be this way.

  She turns back to Aunt Virtue, and they resume the minute adjustments of everything in the room, but I stand frozen, her words trembling in the air around me.

  CHAPTER 3

  School the next day feels unbearably long. It’s so hard to concentrate on things like the Pythagorean theorem when I have decided that it’s possible my aunts are immortal creatures. I meet up with Kelsey for American literature class. She is complaining because she lost a button on the brandnew cardigan she’s wearing.

  “Oh,” I note. “I picked up a button this morning.” I fish it out of my pocket, avoiding the old book pages occupying the same space, and hand it to her.

  “Of course it’s a perfect match,” Kelsey sighs. “I don’t know how you do that.”

  “I’m a good best friend,” I tell her.

  “That you are.” Kelsey tucks the button into her own pocket. “You okay, by the way? You seemed quiet in Salem, but I thought you just weren’t having a good time. But you don’t seem yourself today either.”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  But I’m not, of course.

  I decide that I have to go see my father. I just have to. I spend a sleepless night worrying about all the questions in my head and knowing that my aunts will never answer them, but somebody has to. I know my aunts are convinced I should know who I am without knowing anything about my mother, but I feel like I just can’t. How can I? And the fact that my aunts are so dead set against it makes me feel like I really have to know. I’m not usually such a brat, but in this case I can’t help it. I just have to go see my father. He is not always lucid enough to answer questions like that—the poem about my name being a prime example—but I can at least give it a try.

  The day is mostly sunny, although there is a chill in the air, and Ben is doing a brisk business in sweatshirts. I wait impatiently for him to give change to a customer. I haven’t seen him glance my way, but as soon as he’s done, he turns toward me, his pale eyes sharp.

  “What’s wrong?” He has obviously immediately seen my agitation.

  “I’m going to see my father,” I say.

  Ben and I have never discussed anything about our family lives—Ben and I know both everything and nothing about each other—but he doesn’t ask me anything about why my father is someone I have to visit. He just says, “Why?”

  “Because I have so many questions, Ben. I don’t have a mother—”

  “Everyone has a mother,” Ben interjects calmly. “You have a mother; you just don’t know your mother.”

  It seems like a pointless distinction for him to be making right now. “Fine,” I agree. “Whatever. I don’t know her. And no one will tell me anything about her. I have to ask my father. I have to try to ask my father. I have to know. I feel like I have to know. I need to hear the words.”

  Ben is silent for a moment. His eyes darken as the sun passes behind a cloud. He says carefully, “Do you think he’ll tell you?”

  “I don’t know. But I have to try.”

  There is another long
moment of silence. Ben’s eyes search mine. I feel like he is asking me a question that I don’t understand.

  “What?” I say.

  He just shakes his head, and it might be my imagination, me projecting my own emotional upheaval onto him, but I think he looks sad, and on impulse, I hug him. I have never done this before, and the awkwardness of having done it strikes me as soon as it happens, and I let go so quickly that I don’t even have time to register how it feels. I am suddenly embarrassed, and I have no idea why I’ve done it—why am I constantly doing things without thinking?—and I have the fleeting impression that Ben looks surprised before I turn and flee to the subway station like a coward. I am almost relieved when the train predictably gets stuck underground for a little while; it gives my cheeks time to stop burning.

  ***

  I take the Red Line all the way to the Alewife end, where there is a small, nondescript, charming-looking building that you would never know houses the less sane members of Boston’s better families.

  “Selkie.” The nurse at the front desk smiles at me. I am on a first-name basis with everyone at this place. I have been coming here, after all, for sixteen years. “Where are your aunts?” She looks past me for them. I have never come alone before.

  “Just me this time,” I say confidently, as if this isn’t unusual. “Is my dad around?” It’s the most ridiculous question for me to ask. Where else would he be?

  “Of course he’s here,” she answers, which highlights the absurdity of my question. “I’ll have someone fetch him for you.”

  There’s a little room where you meet with people. It feels like a pretty little sun porch, filled to the brim with too many flowery patterns on the furniture and the drapes, but you always know that people are watching—politely but close enough to intercede should anything happen. There’s a grandfather clock in this room, but it always tells the right time. I find that odd and unsettling.

  “Selkie,” says Dad as he walks into the room to see me, and he holds his arms out for a hug, and I hug him back, and he smells vaguely of hospital, which he always does, but that is not a bad smell to me; that is my father’s smell. “What brings you here? Where are your aunts?”

  “They’re home,” I tell him truthfully. He is holding my hands in his and beaming at me, and I study him, just to make sure he’s all right, the way I always do. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he assures me. “So happy to see you.”

  “Good.” I smile, and then I hesitate, trip over my errand, think maybe I should turn around and leave.

  Dad notices. His smile turns quizzical. “Is there something wrong, Selkie?” His expression grows more concerned. “Aunt True and Aunt Virtue are all right, aren’t they?”

  “They’re fine,” I say. I clear my throat. “Dad. Can you tell me about Mom?”

  He smiles the absently fond smile he has always smiled the few times he has spoken to me about her. “One day,” he says, “I walked into my Back Bay apartment to find a blond woman asleep on my couch. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

  I am frustrated. I have heard this all before. “But who was she?”

  “The most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” he says. “And she gave me you, and she told me to name you Selkie.”

  “Did you love her?” I ask.

  “The most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” he repeats vaguely, his gaze unfocused.

  “Why did she leave me, Dad?” I try not to sound like I’m on the verge of tears.

  “She couldn’t stay in Boston, of course,” he answers, and I am shocked because this is—finally—something new. I think of my aunts, saying that my mother hadn’t belonged here.

  “Why not?”

  “And you were my right,” Dad says fiercely, looking at me.

  I blink, startled. “What does that mean?”

  My father’s gaze loses the unusual clarity it just had, softens. “Where are your aunts?” he asks.

  “Home,” I answer briefly, trying to get him back to his mood of revelations. “Didn’t she love me?”

  “Love you?” he says, as if the words hold no meaning for him, and I am disappointed. I have lost my window of lucidity.

  I decide to just give one more question a shot. “I went to Salem,” I start, reaching into my kangaroo pocket, closing my hand around the ancient pages.

  “Salem,” he repeats blankly.

  “There was this book,” I continue. “Well, books,” I amend.

  He looks at me, vaguely interested. “Books,” he says. “Powerful things, books. All those words, trapped in writing.”

  It is so similar to what Will had said at the Which Museum that it gives me pause. I go on slowly. “Your name was in them—you, Aunt True, Aunt Virtue.”

  Dad’s eyes sharpen. “What books?” he asks. “What books were they exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” I stammer honestly, taken aback by his reaction. “I don’t remember the names. But look—this is a list of the first settlers of Boston, and you’re all listed.” I pull it out, show it to him eagerly.

  “We’re an old family,” he interjects, and he sounds saner than I’ve ever heard him. He looks narrow eyed at the paper I have handed him.

  “And then there was this portrait, Dad,” I say, unfolding it, “this painting, in another book, and it’s Aunt True and Aunt Virtue. I mean, look, it’s them, but it’s from 1760.” I thrust it at him. “And there was this epic poem, and—”

  “Blaxton,” Dad cuts me off, and his voice is dangerously quiet. I have never heard him talk that way to me before, and for the first time, I might be scared of him but I think I am more confused.

  “Mom?” I say, because she is the only Blaxton I’ve ever heard of. “What does she have to do with it?”

  “Not your mother,” he tells me, biting the words off. He drops the pages to the ground.

  I stoop to pick them up, stuff them back in my pocket. “Then who—” I start, but he lunges for me suddenly, grabbing my hands in his, the grip iron tight. “You’re hurting me,” I manage, but my voice sounds so small, and I feel frozen.

  “And if Blaxton’s involved, then you’ve been talking to Benedict,” he accuses, his voice slicing.

  I look up into his face, and it is so contorted with fury that it doesn’t even look like my dad anymore. “Who?” I stammer.

  “Benedict Le Fay,” he spits out.

  “Faye…?” I echo vaguely, still thinking he must mean my mother somehow.

  My father catches my chin painfully between his fingers. “What did you tell them?” he demands, and he is breathing quickly, sucking in his air through his teeth. “I knew they couldn’t be trusted. It’s like the old saying goes.”

  I should be terrified, I think, but I am still too stunned. “Who? What old saying?”

  And then, suddenly, attendants are on my father, pulling him away from me. They are restraining him, apologizing to me, pushing him away from me, through the door, but I cannot hear what they are saying because all I know is that my father meets my eyes and shouts, thoroughly enraged, “Did you tell him your birth date?”

  Then my father is gone, through the door; it slams shut behind him, and air whooshes out of me in a great rush, like I had not been breathing for hours beforehand, and maybe it is the fear finally hitting me, but I feel almost dizzy, and the nurse is there and she is comforting me, apologizing, asking if I’m okay, pushing a glass of water on me, and I take the water blindly but I don’t drink it, and I clutch it, and I say, “I have to go home. I have to go home.”

  I take the water with me when I leave, but I don’t realize that I’m carrying it until I reach the T station. I look down at it, clutched in my hand, and then I turn away from the T station door. I walk a few steps along the sidewalk. It is rush hour, and the people on the sidewalk are not delaying; they are hurrying toward th
eir destinations, and they pay me no attention.

  I turn my back to them, and I open my hand, and the glass tumbles to the sidewalk and shatters. Its water streams along the concrete, and shards of glass sparkle like diamonds around me, vicious and beautiful.

  I lean down and pick up one and wrap it carefully in a tissue I find in my pocket and then put it in the pocket of my sweatshirt, beside the ancient pages.

  I have no idea why.

  ***

  By the time I reach Park Street, I am still dazed and shaken. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is any clearer. I feel like my life is composed entirely of other people’s secrets, and that isn’t fair—it’s my life. I am dazed and shaken and I am furious.

  I step off the subway train and dart around a guy who comes running in front of me out of nowhere. I go home and find my aunts at the dining room table.

  “Really, gnomes and their taste for Napoleon brandy,” Aunt Virtue is saying, and they both look up when I come in.

  “Selkie,” says Aunt True. “You’re late for dinner.”

  “Where were you?” asks Aunt Virtue.

  “I went to see Dad,” I say, a little breathless still.

  “Your father,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “Why didn’t you tell us? We would have gone along,” says Aunt True.

  “Wait,” says Aunt Virtue and frowns. “This isn’t about your mother again, is it?”

  “Oh, Selkie, is it?” says Aunt True. “We told you—”

  “I know,” I say. “I know you told me, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it, I just wanted to know—”

  “You can’t know, Selkie.” Aunt True’s tone is begging me. “You just can’t. You cannot ask these questions; you cannot hear these words.”

  “Please,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “What will happen?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”

  “We will lose you,” says Aunt True. “We will lose you forever.”

  And I want to tell them that they will never lose me, that I will always love them, no matter who my mother is. But their wide, dark eyes look at me, full of fear, and I can think of nothing but trying to soothe them, trying to get things back to normal.