A heart made from the finest bone china? Zoe thought. That had been one of the rare times when she had craved a partner, a spouse, a husband, someone to turn to and ask, “Can you believe this crap?”
That was the end of Marcy the psychologist. “Just be aware”: ha! Zoe was aware of that and a lot more. She would take care of her daughter herself.
Zoe had heard warnings from other mothers since Penny was a little girclass="underline" “She’s cute now, but just you wait!” Something sinister lurked on the horizon; it would roll in like bad weather. Adolescence. But Zoe and Penny had remained close. They were best friends. As a parenting strategy, this was neither popular nor fashionable, but Zoe didn’t care. She loved her intimacy with her daughter. There were nights when Penny climbed into Zoe’s bed and the two of them slept next to each other, sharing a pillow like orphaned sisters. Zoe continually told both the twins, “You can tell me anything.” There would be no judgment, nothing to fear. She loved them unconditionally. “You can tell me anything.”
And right up until the day she died, Penny had told Zoe everything, or what Zoe had assumed was everything.
JAKE
They flew to Boston, then boarded a shuttle bus that would take them to the international terminal. Jake’s father kept doing the shoulder thing. He didn’t touch Jake’s mother at all, not even accidentally, but that wasn’t unusual. Jake’s mind was spinning and flashing like a police light. Escape! Get back home! He was ten months away from his eighteenth birthday.
The dirt on Penny’s grave was as moist and black as chocolate cake. Grass would grow over it, but Jake couldn’t decide if that would make things better or worse.
Terminal E. Boston to LAX, LAX to Sydney. After that interminable trip, another six-hour flight to Perth. They were traveling to the other side of the world.
Their gate was filled with jolly Australians. Was there such a thing as a national temperament? Jake wondered. Or were there Australians out there somewhere who weren’t open and friendly and affable? Jake’s mother perked up as soon as she heard the accent. It was as if she had been transported into an episode of Home and Away, the Australian soap opera that she watched incessantly on the bootlegged DVDs sent to her by her sister May. She swung her hair around gracefully and said, “I’m going for a coffee. You want?”
“No, thank you,” Jake’s father whispered.
Jake shook his head.
His mother gave him a genuine smile, an event that was so rare it actually spooked him. She was the unhappiest person Jake knew, though she hadn’t always been that way. Before Jake’s infant brother, Ernie, had died, Ava had been normal and momlike, maybe a little annoying, maybe a little uptight and preoccupied with giving Jake a sibling. But there were pictures of Ava in the red photo album where she was making silly faces and kissing baby Jake and Jake’s father. There were pictures of her before Jake was born where she was deeply tanned and wearing a bikini, her golden-brown hair braided down her back. There were pictures of her surfing and kayaking and one of her leaping in midair, getting ready to pummel a volleyball. Jake used to stare at these pictures. That was the woman he wanted to claim as his mother. But since Ernie had died in his crib at eight weeks old, Ava had become jagged and shrill half the time, and mute and despondent the other half. Anger and bitterness-which were really sadness and deep, deep grief, his father said-lived inside her like a monster. Jake’s father pleaded with Jake to try and forgive her for the way she sometimes acted. But it was too much to ask, Jake thought. Jake had grown calluses over his nerve endings where his mother was concerned.
Ernie had a tombstone in the cemetery, just as Penny now did. Jake’s mother tended the plot at Ernie’s grave; she bought bouquets of supermarket flowers every week. When Ava was home, she sequestered herself in the room where Ernie had-for no good or explicable reason-stopped breathing. Ava either watched episodes of Home and Away or reread passages of her favorite book, which was, shockingly, not an Australian classic but rather that most American of novels, Moby-Dick, because her father had read it to her when she was a child. Ernie’s grave, the soap opera, Moby-Dick: these comprised 90 percent of the life of Ava Randolph. It was the other 10 percent, her interactions with the outside world, that glinted like shards of broken glass on the side of the road. There was her anger, which could take anyone’s eye out like an errant arrow. And there was her venom, which she seemed to save solely for Jake’s father.
Ava was present for the important stuff at school, such as Jake’s induction into the National Honor Society and the final night of the musical. This past year, the musical had been Grease, with Jake playing Danny and Penny playing Sandy. His mother had taken a shower and brushed out her hair. She had put on makeup and perfume. She had entered the auditorium with her head held high and her eyes defiant, his father trailing three steps behind her like a loyal servant. Jake had peered at them from behind the heavy stage curtain. He could hear the audience murmuring: Ava Randolph was out. Sightings of her were as rare as comets, and everyone knew why, so everyone kept a respectful distance-except Lynne Castle, his mother’s only stalwart friend. Lynne plopped herself down next to Ava and kissed the side of her face as though nothing were amiss, as though Ava weren’t capable of lashing out even at her, or of standing up and walking out of the auditorium for no reason at all.
Ava had seemed to enjoy the musical. She had clapped at the end, and when Jake and Penny took their final bows, she had joined in the standing ovation.
The only person who sought out Ava Randolph’s company was Penny. Some afternoons, after Jake had stayed late at school working on Veritas, the student newspaper, or at a Student Council meeting, he would come home to find Penny in his mother’s room, lying across the foot of her bed, the two of them watching Home and Away, Ava dutifully explaining the intricacies of the plot lines. Jake would be lying if he said this hadn’t worried him.
He’d said to Penny, “You don’t have to hang out with my mother, you know.”
And Penny had said, “Oh, I know. But I like her.”
Like her? Jake loved his mother-she was his mother, after all-but even he didn’t like her. He was afraid of her. On her best days, she was like a ghost that lived in the house with his father and him, occasionally haunting the dinner table and eating a few bites of whatever they were having. (They ate a lot of pizza and Thai takeout.) Ava floated around the house-mostly in the predawn hours-dealing with the cut flowers for Ernie’s grave. She slept alone in Ernie’s nursery.
Jake didn’t think his parents ever had sex. They didn’t touch; they barely even spoke, though there were nights when Jake would be awakened by the sound of the two of them screaming at each other.
HIS MOTHER: I want out of here, Jordan!
HIS FATHER: You’re free to go, Ava, you know that.
HIS MOTHER: I want to go for good, and I’m not going without Jake. Or you.
HIS FATHER: My family has owned and run the paper since 1870, Ava. Six generations of Randolphs. It’s my birthright, and guess what else? I love it. You knew this when you married me. You knew my life had to be here.
HIS MOTHER: My life doesn’t matter. My life has never mattered.
HIS FATHER: If you want to go, go. For God’s sake, just go. Go by yourself, stay as long as you want! You used to have no problem doing that.