The Murderer's Daughters Part 10

Lulu scowled. "I don't know and I'm not asking. You just have to be good. If they let us stay for three years, then I'll be over eighteen, and I can take care of you." Lulu removed my hand from my chest, where I'd been tracing my scar. "Really good," she emphasized. "We can't make any trouble for them."

"Aren't they taking us so they can take care of us?"

"They're old. Mrs. Cohen is even retiring."

"She's not that old."

"G.o.d, Merry, she's like sixty. Sixty! If she were our real mother, she would have given birth to you at like fifty."

Lulu stuffed my collection of Nancy Drew books-her old ones-into Grandma's suitcase. "Mrs. Cohen feels bad for us-but she won't keep us if we cause them trouble. Doctor Cohen won't let her." She gave me the same slit-eyed look I swore I remembered getting from Mama. "They're not adopting us; we're just foster children."

Lulu pushed the bag of framed photos she'd brought into my room on top of everything else in Grandma's suitcase. I'd taken them from Grandma's house when Uncle Irving took us there and said, whatever you want is yours. I didn't know what else to take. The heavy chopper with the worn wooden handle that Grandma always used to make egg salad? The thick maroon blanket on her bed? Lulu saw me examining everything and said, "The Cohens will think you're crazy if you walk in with a bag of Grandma's old stuff," so I just took some pictures, and Lulu kept them safe from Reetha for me.

I wished I'd taken something Grandma had held, though. Something I could touch and feel her.

The biggest photograph showed Daddy on their wedding day. Mama wasn't in the picture. Daddy's teeth were perfect Chiclets, his hair slicked back. He was the handsomest man I'd ever seen.

Daddy held me high on his shoulders as Coney Island wind whipped our hair. I looked like a miniature teenager in a tiny bikini. That was the summer before Mama died. Daddy used to sing the itsy-bitsy bikini song, subst.i.tuting red polka dot for yellow, because my bathing suit had red dots. Grandma had laughed when I said that. "How could you remember that?" she'd said. "You were just a little pishkelah."

I didn't care if no one believed me. It was one of my favorite memories, and I hardly had any memories of Mama, even though I missed her every single day.

"Do me a favor, Merry," Lulu said. "Don't put the pictures all over your room at the Cohens', okay? Put them away."

Living with the Cohens never felt easy. After almost a year, I knew how to be good, almost perfect, but I kept worrying that, at some point, I'd forget. Lulu kept reminding me how one minute of forgetting could mean disaster.

I walked home from school kicking the blowing October leaves around. Central Park leaves, Manhattan leaves, were prettier than Brooklyn's.

I usually walked the five blocks home from school with my best friend, Katie, but she had a cold and had missed school. Walking alone was okay; just knowing I had a friend kept me company. Plus, I needed to figure stuff out, like how I was ever going to see Daddy again.

I ran my hand down the brand-new coat Mrs. Cohen had bought me at Bloomingdale's, where it felt as though I were in a museum, with everything under gla.s.s, sparkling in bright white light. The day we bought the coat, Mrs. Cohen kept hugging me as we walked around the store, both of us touching silky s.h.i.+rts, admiring gold lockets and watches.

Anne.

Mom.

Mrs. Cohen.

I still didn't have a clue what to call her.

The night Lulu and I moved in, Mrs. Cohen had said, "Call me Anne," and a few weeks later, she'd said, "You can call me Mom if you like," in a wis.h.i.+ng kind of voice, but when I tried it out, it sounded stupid. The Cohens' real children, who were grown-ups with little kids of their own, looked sour and angry when they heard me call her Mom. Most of all, I couldn't do it because I thought Mama would be mad.

Even if I'd wanted to call Mrs. Cohen Mom, which sometimes I sort of did, then I'd have to call Doctor Cohen Dad, but he hadn't asked, and anyway, I still had a real father. So now, I didn't call either of them anything, which made conversations hard. Grandma would have said this should be the worst thing that ever happened. She'd've told me to stop thinking so much.

I tugged my coat closer, s.h.i.+elding out the wind.

Thinking about my father made everything feel swimmy. Even with Katie, I had to pretend Daddy was dead. Lulu had given me orders, before we started at our new school.

"I have something to tell you," Lulu had begun, acting as though I might throw a fit, which I never did anymore. "When we start school, you're not allowed to say anything about our father or jail or our mother or anything." This had all come out in one fast breath of a sentence.

"Who said? Them?" "Them," of course, was the Cohens.

"I say." Lulu had held her hand out when I squawked. "I'm not going to be Murder Girl anymore and neither are you. Understand?"

I'd started crying, quietly though, so Mrs. Cohen didn't come in all upset and wanting to know what was happening.

Lulu had poked me in the shoulder. "Quit it."

"Ouch."

"Listen to me." She'd put her hands on my shoulders. "This is our story: Our parents died in a car crash. That's it. They crashed upstate. Driving to the Catskills. We lived with Mimi Rubee until she died. We went to Duffy because we had no other relatives. Now we're here. That's that."

Lulu was all I had. I obeyed her no matter what.

Sooner than I'd wanted, I reached the Cohens' large white apartment building on West Eighty-seventh Street. The doorman, Dominic, nodded and smiled just as he always did when opening the door. I usually thought about Dominic in the last few steps before turning down our block. How I had to smile and make sure he didn't think I was spoiled or taking him for granted or anything. I hated having a doorman.

After grinning and thanking him, I ran to the waiting elevator and pressed the b.u.t.ton for six, feeling the familiar whoosh as it went up. I put my key in the door, praying no one was home. By myself, I could snoop around and not worry if I was being good or bad.

"Merry?" Mrs. Cohen walked out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a blue-checked dish towel. "Guess who's here!"

I tried not to show my feelings. "Eleanor?" I asked. Mrs. Cohen's daughter acted like something stunk whenever she saw me. At least Mrs. Cohen's son just pretended I didn't exist.

"Come join us. We have brownies and ice cream."

I put my book bag down in the foyer and shuffled to the kitchen. "Hi," I said to Eleanor, trying not to sound disappointed.

Eleanor nodded as she tried to disentangle herself from her five-year-old, Rachel, who tugged at Eleanor's long skirt. Ugly, as were all her clothes. Her skirt resembled a burlap bag, and her velvet s.h.i.+rt had stiff spots where breast milk had leaked. A scarf tied on the back of her head held back her frizzy blond hair. Lulu said that Eleanor dressed as if she thought she was still a hippie teenager. I'd heard Doctor Cohen ask Mrs. Cohen why Eleanor had to dress like a peasant. Her brother, Saul, dressed the opposite, with everything perfectly tucked. He was a surgeon, like Doctor Cohen, and kept his life precise and clean.

"Mom, please, can you get her while I nurse the baby?" Eleanor nudged Rachel toward Mrs. Cohen with her knee.

"Merry, why don't you hold Rachel?" Mrs. Cohen turned her nervous suns.h.i.+ne smile on Rachel. "Don't you want Cousin Merry to read to you, darling?"

Rachel raced to the pile of books and toys Mrs. Cohen kept in a wicker basket. Eleanor rolled her eyes. I rubbed my thumb against my lower lip.

"Stop confusing her," Eleanor said. "If you keep calling everyone her cousin, Rachel won't have a clue what it means."

Mrs. Cohen looked apologetically first at Eleanor, then at me. "Hardly everyone." She squeezed my shoulder and handed me a dish of ice cream topped with a fat, walnut-studded brownie, which I'd throw up if I tried to force it past my closed throat.

"Read this." Rachel dropped a Dr. Seuss book in my lap. I grabbed the book and carried her to the living room before Mrs. Cohen or Eleanor said any more.

"The sun did not s.h.i.+ne. It was too wet to play," I read. Rachel snuggled in close, slipping a thumb in her rosebud of a mouth.

Across from the couch stood the Cohens' satiny baby grand piano, which seemed not a baby but enormous. Since it was Monday, when the cleaning lady came, the black top gleamed. Pictures and pictures and more pictures cluttered the top, the gilded frames outlining the Cohens' lives.

A lone picture of Lulu and me perched on edge of the piano, taken at the home of relatives of Doctor Cohen's who lived in Long Island. We both wore tiny, flat smiles. I'd clung to Lulu the entire day. n.o.body had talked to us except to comment on how beautiful I was-Look at those curls and dimples!-ignoring Lulu as though she were my babysitter.

"So we sat in the house / All that cold, cold, wet day."

When we first came to live with the Cohens, I hadn't wanted to be anywhere without Lulu. I'd even waited outside the bathroom for her. The apartment seemed enormous, even though I'd visited before. The prospect of living with a man seemed impossibly strange. My breath had come in short, little bursts as Lulu and I walked around the apartment. Mrs. Cohen had said it was our home now, except we should never go into Doctor Cohen's study; entering that room was forbidden. A month later, I saw Doctor Cohen bring Rachel in to draw and play with her dolls while he worked.

I bet Daddy wouldn't keep me out of his study. Lulu said Mama usually let us play in her room, that we used to make her big bed into our circus grounds, propping a broomstick under the covers to create the big top. Lulu only talked about these things late at night when I had a nightmare that made my head hurt so bad I thought I might smash it open just to make the pain stop and I ran into Lulu's room.

Rachel grew heavy as she slurped on her thumb and settled in deeper. If I lived with Daddy and he had a study, I didn't think he'd forbid me to enter.

As I read the last line of the book, I saw Rachel had drifted off to sleep. I covered her with the patchwork afghan Mrs. Cohen kept on the couch and tiptoed to my room.

Having a s.p.a.ce just for me still surprised me. Where everything at Duffy had been limp and worn, here new, s.h.i.+ny things filled my room. Silky yellow ropes tied back billowing orange curtains. Rainbow pillows covered my bed. The only thing I didn't like was the framed poster of a tree in winter, stripped bare with dark limbs hanging against a bleak gray background. I found the picture depressing, but the Cohens liked it so much I pretended to like it also.

I noticed two new envelopes on my bed and rushed over. They had to be from my father. No one else mailed me anything. One was for me, and one would be for Lulu. Lulu wouldn't open Daddy's letters, so he addressed them to me, then I had the job of trying to get Lulu to listen to what he'd written, a task I usually failed.

I slit open my envelope.

Dear Merry, I miss you like you wouldn't believe. Like walls miss paint! Like Abbott missed Costello! Like baseb.a.l.l.s miss bats! It's sure been a long sad time since Grandma died and I got to see both you and Lulu.

All Daddy's letters started with this: how he missed me, and how long it had been since he'd seen me. Last week's letters had included skies missing stars and soap missing washcloths.

Nothing new here (ha ha!). Well, that's not true. I got a roommate. Not exactly a good thing in prison. It gets more crowded here every day. I knew that eventually my time would come. At least this guy (his name is Hank) doesn't seem out to do me dirty.

Sometimes the stuff my father wrote made me wish I were blind.

I finished my optician program. Can you believe it? I really did learn a new trade in here. Grandma would be happy. I make lenses for gla.s.ses now. I'm a grinder. I'll tell you all about it when I see you. And when will that be? I wrote to your new foster parents, but I'm still waiting for a reply. By the way, Cookie, I told them not to think about adopting you. I don't have any intention of giving up my only family.

Was Daddy mad at me? I thought of him throwing things. Banging things. Hurting the Cohens. Everything tightened, and I tapped my chest until the feeling pa.s.sed.

Did the Cohens want to adopt Lulu and me? Was that why Daddy had double-underlined? I didn't dare ask my father when I wrote back, because if the Cohens saw the letters, maybe they'd think I didn't want them to adopt me. Or that I did.

Merry, keep telling them you want to come. Ask them a lot! I need you soooooo much!

So, how is school? Are you still best friends with Katie? I look forward to meeting her when I get out of here. My lawyer is working on another appeal. He says they should have treated a crime of pa.s.sion different.

Anyway, remember how much I love you. I miss you like cars miss wheels. Love, Daddy I dropped the prison paper and tried to figure out how I could visit my father. I couldn't imagine Mrs. Cohen, wearing her gold bracelets and scarves, going with me into a prison.

I had to hide this letter. I had to get the Cohens to take me to Daddy before he got us all in trouble. What if they realized we were too hard to have around? What if they gave us back before Lulu turned eighteen?

11.

Merry November 1977 "I hope I didn't take advantage of your sister." Mrs. Cohen pushed a handful of stuffing into the turkey as I steadied it. "Do you think buying the turkey for me put her out?"

Lulu worked at a supermarket after school, which Mrs. Cohen thought gave Lulu the inside track to the best bird.

"It's fine." Even after two years, I avoided directly addressing Mrs. Cohen. I'd turn twelve in December, and I still didn't know how to handle the problem. Working with her in the kitchen was torture. I tilted my head down and caught her eye each time I needed to ask or answer her. "All the kids at the A & P try to get the best turkey for their parents. Lulu told me."

I cringed hearing myself say parent but used it anyway, knowing it made Mrs. Cohen happy. I didn't care about lying, not when my lies made people feel special. That's why people liked me. Anyway, did Mrs. Cohen actually believe Lulu cared about which turkey we served for Thanksgiving? Not that Lulu would deny any request Mrs. Cohen made, but after she'd go on and on about how annoying Mrs. Cohen was.

"Lulu is so sensitive to breaking rules." Mrs. Cohen patted the turkey. "I just wanted to have a big enough bird. You're sure she's not angry at me?"

Mrs. Cohen mined me for information as though I had some magic bead on my sister. As if. You'd have as much luck breaking into Fort Knox as you would trying to pry something personal from Lulu. Mrs. Cohen was desperate to understand my sister. If I wanted, I could have told her Lulu cared only about applying to colleges outside New York and getting away from the Cohens.

When I'd recently asked Lulu why she hated the Cohens so much, she'd snapped her fingers in my face and said, "Wake up, Merry. We're just their project. You don't really believe they think we're family, do you?" She'd gotten a sort of twisted look on her face, which I almost thought meant she was going to cry. "The only family we have is each other."

I would have mentioned Daddy, but that would only make Lulu mad.

"She's not angry," I a.s.sured Mrs. Cohen. "Just tired."

Lulu had practically thrown the turkey on the table when she came home last night. Mrs. Cohen often fretted about the hours Lulu worked, but Doctor Cohen insisted that as long as Lulu stayed on the honor roll-and for goodness' sake, Anne, she has the third-highest grades in the school-he approved of her long hours. Working built character. It would help her attain a scholars.h.i.+p.

Doctor Cohen used words like attain instead of get. My grades, good or bad, never worked him up, even though I was in seventh grade now. He left me to Mrs. Cohen. Most of the time it was Mrs. Cohen and me hanging out alone at home, just the two of us. Lulu was hardly ever around. If she wasn't working at the supermarket, she was serving food at a homeless shelter or volunteering at a hospital in Harlem. The savior, Eleanor called her, but she didn't sound like she was complimenting Lulu. That girl has a savior complex, she'd say to Mrs. Cohen, shaking her head and pursing her lips.

"Would you start slicing the potatoes?" Mrs. Cohen asked.

I dropped the now fully stuffed turkey, which weighed a ton, and reached for the cutting board. I rinsed and rerinsed the potatoes the way Mrs. Cohen had taught me, then cut each of them in quarters for boiling and mas.h.i.+ng, trying to make all the pieces as equal as possible.

"Is everyone coming?" I smiled to show how excited I was at the prospect of the Cohen family overrunning the apartment.

Mrs. Cohen seemed pleased by my question. "Everyone will be here."

"Do you want me to s.h.i.+ne the good gla.s.ses?" I hoped not. We'd been in the kitchen for hours, and spending so much time trapped with her exhausted me.

"What would I do without you?" Mrs. Cohen asked.

I turned my back on her and made a face in the toaster. Then I reached for the gla.s.ses.

The roasted turkey looked like an advertis.e.m.e.nt from the Ladies' Home Journal. Doctor Cohen placed the silver platter on the dining room table. The table, opened to its fullest extension and covered with a heavy white tablecloth, ironed by the cleaning woman that morning, looked like a televi sion show. Lulu had rolled her eyes when Mrs. Cohen explained how the woman didn't mind coming in on a holiday because they paid her triple time.

"As though that makes a difference," Lulu had muttered. "They should give her extra money for slaving for them all year. A day's salary for not working would be a nice Thanksgiving gesture, wouldn't it? Instead of tearing her away from her family?"

I'd agreed, but been afraid Mrs. Cohen would hear us and get all upset and hurt. Lulu, who'd wanted so much for the Cohens to take us into their home, seemed to hate them more with each pa.s.sing year.

"Before we slice the turkey, let us give thanks." Doctor Cohen placed his hands lightly on each side of the platter, as though presenting it for thought. He looked to either side of the table, the left, where Eleanor sat with her family, then the right, gazing proudly at Saul-the-other-surgeon and his wife and baby.

Mrs. Cohen suns.h.i.+ned her grin around the room. "Who wants to start?"

I was sure they were all waiting for Lulu and me to give thanks for the Cohens taking us in, as though we were puppies rescued from the pound and certain death, who should roll over and expose our bellies for petting.

Last year I'd mumbled something about being grateful for everyone being healthy. Lulu had said we should give thanks that n.o.body at the table had family who'd died in Vietnam. Mrs. Cohen had nodded as if Lulu had said the wisest thing in the world, though I knew Lulu had been digging at them for being so ent.i.tled. All I'd wanted was for Lulu to shut up before the Cohens got mad.

Lulu thought the Cohens were the worst sort of liberals, stuffed with money and pretending to be regular people. Soon after we'd enrolled in our new schools in Manhattan, Lulu became what Doctor Cohen called our in-house protester.

Mrs. Cohen worried when Lulu covered her bedroom walls with slogans like "Boycott Lettuce and Grapes" and "Sisterhood Is Powerful."

"Not that I don't sympathize with Lulu's beliefs," Mrs. Cohen had told me recently, "and of course women should have equal rights, but I don't want her becoming obsessed."