‘Your wallet,’ Soleil said. She held out her hand toward Gabrielle. Gabrielle placed the wallet in Soleil’s hand, and she put it in Henry’s.
‘Jeez. Where’d you find this?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know it was gone.’
‘At the grocery store,’ Soleil said.
‘On the other side of the lake,’ Gabrielle added.
‘Well, thank you, ladies,’ he said. He tipped an imaginary hat toward them.
‘That’s it?’ Soleil said.
‘You want to come in?’ he said, his eyes on Soleil’s mouth.
‘No, thank you. I’m just wondering where this young woman’s reward money is.’
‘Reward?’
‘Yes, that’s customary when someone returns a wallet.’
‘I don’t like beggars,’ Henry Sam Stewart said. ‘I might have given you a reward if you hadn’t been so pushy.’
‘The reward’s not for me. It’s for Bree here. An eleven-year-old girl who’s too honest to take the money from your cheap wallet.’
‘Well, thank you, Bree,’ he said to Gabrielle. ‘Sometimes kindness is its own reward. Maybe your mother hasn’t learned that yet?’
Gabrielle looked at Soleil. Her hair was wild, her eyes glazed over. She looked beautiful.
‘Do you know what kind of lesson you’re teaching this child?’ Soleil said. ‘I can’t stand people who think they don’t owe people anything. What kind of world is that? I’m going to write down her address here and when you become a decent person, I want you to send her the reward money.’
Soleil took a piece of paper from her purse. ‘What’s your address again, Bree?’ she asked.
Henry Sam Stewart shut the door on them.
Soleil clenched her fists, tilted her head to the sky and mimed screaming. Then, composing herself, she wrote down Gabrielle’s address and pushed the paper under the door.
‘Moron!’ she yelled.
Gabrielle first saw Katy through the window of her living room. She was bent over, brushing the underside of her blonde hair furiously, as if beating a rug.
Soleil knocked on the door and walked in. Katy turned upright, her face pink, her hair enormous.
Soleil and Katy kissed each other on both cheeks, and then Katy kissed Gabrielle on both cheeks. Katy had the air of being pretty, with a small nose and a golden tan.
‘We brought groceries,’ Soleil said.
‘You’re always the best guest,’ Katy said.
‘I’m always a guest.’
‘Not settled down yet?’
‘Catch me if you can.’
‘Gin and tonic?’
Soleil answered by clapping her hands together.
‘Bree?’ Soleil said. ‘You want a Coke?’
An hour later Soleil and Katy were drunk. Rod Stewart sang from the record player, and Katy and Soleil were trying on clothes and dancing around the green-carpeted living room. Gabrielle sat on an itchy plaid couch. Her job, the women said, was to rate their outfits. They were taking a dinner-boat cruise on the lake that night.
‘We want to look like a million bucks,’ Soleil said.
‘It’s a fine line,’ Katy added, ‘between looking like a million and looking like you cost a million.’
Soleil laughed. If this was a joke, Gabrielle didn’t get it. Soleil and Katy modeled outfits that would have been right for an opera; they modeled outfits that would have looked appropriate on the moon. Finally, they settled on dresses that required them to adjust their bra straps with safety pins. Katy’s hemline was high; Soleil’s neckline was low; watching them standing side by side, Gabrielle thought they looked like they’d gone crazy with a pair of scissors.
‘Now it’s time for us to dress you up,’ Katy said.
‘It sure is,’ said Soleil and pulled Gabrielle into Katy’s bedroom with a force that scared her.
Katy followed them, and she and Soleil stood looking at Gabrielle’s reflection in the closet mirror.
‘You would look so good in ivory,’ Katy said. ‘Your skin is so olive-y.’
‘It’s her dad’s skin,’ Soleil said.
‘Jack?’ Katy said to Soleil in a hushed tone.
Soleil nodded, and closed her lips tight. Gabrielle watched the women’s faces, and saw the stern look that passed between their inebriated eyes. She felt as though she’d swallowed a stone and it was making its way to her stomach.
‘If I were you, I’d show off those legs,’ Katy said, turning her attention back to Gabrielle. ‘I have just the thing.’
Katy pulled an ivory slip out of her dresser drawer and draped it over Gabrielle’s head.
Soleil examined her with one eye closed. ‘I think you need a piece of jewelry so it’s clear you’re wearing it as a dress. Hold on a second.’ She left the room.
‘You look like a picture of a girl I saw in a French painting!’ Katy said. ‘It was a painting of a girl who dropped her pail…’
‘Here,’ Soleil said, returning with something in her hand. The electronic heart pin. Soleil pinned it onto the slip, right above Gabrielle’s real heart, and turned it on.
‘What do you think?’ Katy said.
Gabrielle stared at the mirror. She couldn’t focus on anything she was seeing – she saw a ghostly shape and a flashing light. She didn’t look anything like herself, and, at the moment, this was an enormous relief. The stone in her throat was gone.
‘Look at her,’ Soleil said. ‘She’s fucking gorgeous.’
‘I wish,’ Katy said, ‘I wish I had a pail for her to carry.’
They arrived at the boat late.
‘We were about to leave without you,’ said the man taking their tickets. He was wearing jeans with suspenders. Gabrielle looked around: all of the passengers appeared to have come straight from a game of tennis or a hike. Was anyone else wearing lingerie as a dress?
A horn blew and the boat started moving. Soleil and Katy waved at the two or three people on the shore as though they were setting out on a two week cruise.
At the dinner buffet, Gabrielle moved quickly, passing over food she liked, anything to expedite getting to a chair and not bringing attention to her clothing. She spotted an empty table at the back of the dining room and suggested they sit there.
‘What? No, this one’s better,’ Katy said, pointing to a table near the dance floor. Two men wearing patterned shirts were already there.
‘It’s your lucky night,’ Katy said to them, as she and Soleil and Gabrielle sat down. Their names were Keith and Peter, and both had firm handshakes and deep tans. As the sun set and the cold came over the lake, Gabrielle wished she had brought a jacket. Her mother would have packed one for her.
A man with a sombrero came by each table with roses. Keith bought one and gave it to Gabrielle.
‘Really?’ she said. Keith’s eyes, she noticed, were like her dad’s – green and feline.
‘Yes, a rose for a budding rose,’ Keith said.
‘It smells amazing,’ she said, though it didn’t.
Soleil looked at Keith intently, as if he were a full glass of wine she didn’t want to spill.
After dinner Keith danced with Soleil, and Peter danced with Katy. Gabrielle moved to the edge of the boat and stared out at the water, at the moon. Everything looked the way it was supposed to look; nothing looked spectacular. She held the rose upright, twisting the stem in her fingers.
‘You’re too young for flowers,’ a voice said. Gabrielle turned to find two elderly women dressed in rain gear.
‘You should be at least fifteen before you get flowers,’ the other woman said. ‘Especially a rose.’
Gabrielle wanted to look at the sky and mime screaming, the way Soleil had done. But she couldn’t fake a scream. She couldn’t say a word. Instead, she walked away from the women and sat down at the table, watching the dance floor, and for the first time in her life she believed she understood the word regret. She regretted not saying anything to the women, she regretted the prickling of pride she’d felt when Henry Sam Stewart had mistaken Soleil for her mother.