Stolen Secrets Page 5

  “Her attorney will pay our living expenses and a stipend. We get the first check next week. It should be enough to survive on until …” She stopped, leaving me to fill in the rest.

  Until my grandmother dies.

  Mom looked over my shoulder, lost in thought. I wondered how much of the inheritance she’d already spent in her mind.

  “How long does she have?” The question felt dirty as soon as it left my mouth.

  A car ripped by, the thud of bass shaking its sleek silver frame. Mom waited for it to zoom past. “Adelle isn’t far enough gone to demand a memory-care facility.”

  Far enough gone. I shuddered. For the first time, I truly considered who Adelle Friedman was. It added up to more than a sick old lady. And then I remembered how she’d quoted Faulkner. “Are you sure she has Alzheimer’s?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Vickie—that’s the other caregiver who helps me out—says my mother has good days and bad days. Seems to me it’s more like good minutes and bad minutes. She can’t even remember what a rotten mother she was.” Mom stood up. She brushed the tanbark off her pants. “One thing, Liv. I want you to promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “Keep your distance. You don’t need her in your life.”

  I didn’t know what to say. One day, this will all be over, I thought. We’ll go back to Vermont. We’ll stay with Tom and his wife until Mom finds a job making panna cotta at some upscale Italian restaurant, and then we’ll rent a new home, or maybe buy one of our own, because we’ll have money—a whole lot of it.

  “I promised to take care of her until she gets too difficult to handle,” Mom said. “Could be months …”

  Months? That was no time at all, really. I could be home in time for prom.

  “… or it could be years. The disease doesn’t work the same for everyone.”

  “Are you saying I could end up graduating from Grant High?” I blurted out.

  “I don’t think it will be that long. She’s already confused, forgetting things, losing stuff. But it’ll be worth it one day, Liv, you’ll see.”

  What I was thinking was almost as awful as Mom’s reason for moving us: Imagine not having to take out college loans one day. The thought soured within me. We were discussing my grandmother’s death like it was an event to be put on the calendar.

  Last year in Honors English, we’d learned a German legend. A man named Faust had traded his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly pleasures.

  This didn’t feel a whole lot different.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  AS I WAS ABOUT TO WALK INTO MATH ON TUESDAY morning, my phone buzzed. I freed it from my jeans. It was Candace. Think someone should tell you … Sean’s hanging out with Kendall Perry. SORRY. Thought you should know. I’d want to know.

  I read it again, trying not to overreact. I reminded myself that I wasn’t the jealous type. No point starting now.

  Probably just a friend, I texted back. My eyes began to sting.

  A minute later: Probably.

  I deleted the text, wishing that Candace could ignore her “altruistic” urge to share bad news.

  A blur of movement snatched my phone from my hand. Franklin D. shoved it under his sweatshirt.

  “Excuse me!” a voice bellowed. Mr. Karnofsky, our extremely short, extremely stout, very loud chemistry teacher, glared at me. “Was that a cell phone I saw? Might I remind you of the school policy: no cell phone usage during class time?”

  Franklin D. rolled his eyes to the caged clock in the hallway. “With all due respect, Mr. K., the bell has yet to ring. I believe we have another—”

  The bell rang. Franklin D. finished his thought. “We had another twenty seconds. So technically, Ms. Newman has adhered to all the policies, guidelines, and rules of our institution.”

  “Mr. Schiller, would you like your cell phone taken away?”

  “No, sir.”

  The teacher served a pudgy palm to me, flesh side up. “You may be a new student, but you received the handbook like everyone else.”

  “I don’t have it.” I pulled out my pockets to show him, arching my eyebrows like I wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but it hadn’t been me breaking the rule after only one week in school.

  “If I see it again, it’s gone.” He walked away.

  Franklin D. passed me the phone, which I buried in the folds of my jacket. “I’d hate to see your main connection to the world get stowed in a desk drawer for forty-eight hours,” he said.

  We walked into math and made our way to our desks. Mr. Harrison wasn’t there. Late again.

  “What’s so important that you’d risk the wrath of Karnofsky, anyway?” Franklin D. asked.

  This brought back the text, with all its flaming agony. My eyes filled up.

  “Now that’s what I call gratitude,” Franklin D. said. “I bring the lady to tears.”

  I looked up, having already forgotten he was there.

  “You okay?” he whispered, leaning in.

  I pulled back. “Yeah, thanks. It’s, um, personal.”

  “No problem. Would you like me to reserve a seat for you at my lunch table?” He glanced at an invisible watch on his wrist. “At, say, one thirty, sharp?”

  “I have a meeting at lunch,” I said, thinking fast. “Prom committee.”

  Franklin D. nodded. I’d meant to say homecoming, but he didn’t seem to know the difference. Though the no-cell-phone-usage-where-you-might-be-caught policy had officially commenced, I checked my screen one last time before putting it away.

  “Another time then,” he said. He ripped off a corner of notepaper, scratched out a phone number, and placed it on my binder. “You can text me if you have questions about the school, or meaningless policies, or whatever.”

  I raised a hand in acknowledgment and pulled out my homework.

  The next day, Mom stormed into the apartment. She headed to the living room and fell onto the couch.

  I was sitting on the floor, algebra homework spread in front of me while Jeopardy! played on the TV. Math was my favorite subject. As long as I was careful to get two questions wrong on every test, I wouldn’t screw with the grading curve. I’d learned this the hard way, back in sixth grade.

  Stupid spelling test, Candace once said to me. It’s totally unfair that you get an A and you don’t even have to study.

  “It’s like she gets to have an open book with every test,” Audrey had chimed in.

  “Maybe she’s cheating,” Candace had said.

  I denied it, but that was all. I wanted to tell them about my memory, but they’d be jealous. It would be easier to hide my ability behind a few mistakes.

  On the TV, Alex Trebek announced the Daily Double: “After the 1906 earthquake, prisoners were transferred to this island until local jails could be rebuilt.”

  “What is Alcatraz Island?” I shouted. I tapped Mom on the leg. “Ha! Beat you to it.”

  We always competed for the answers. Granted, I won most of the time. My memory gave me an unfair advantage. That didn’t stop me from gloating, though. It was tradition.

  When Mom didn’t roll off her usual retort, I studied her more closely. Her face was pale, and her eyes ringed with dark circles.

  “We were just there. Alcatraz? Overpriced, nonrefundable tickets?”

  She nodded.

  “How was your day?” I probed.

  “Fine.”

  I picked up her coffee mug from the morning and took it into the kitchen. I turned the tap on and raised my voice, hoping my question would sound casual above the blast of water. “How are things working out with Adelle?”

  “I spent an hour searching for her damn purse,” Mom grumbled.

  It was good to hear her complain. Better than silence.

  “I found it in the pantry, between a can of kidney beans and an empty cereal box,” she said.

  According to the Alzheimer’s website, misplacing stuff happens to everyone, but putting items in weird places? Not so mu
ch. I threw out a question that had been marinating in my head all day. “So, are there other relatives I should know about?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “What made you stop visiting your mother when you were in college? I mean, was it something specific?”

  “Livvy, please, can’t you see I’m exhausted? Another time, okay?”

  I sighed, not sure if there’d ever be enough time for my questions.

  The following Monday, I sat on the steps across the street from the yellow Victorian and waited. Mom wanted me to forget about my grandmother. I’d tried. Really. For a week, I told myself that I was too busy with school to visit Adelle. If Mom’s stories were true, then who needed the drama, right? But with each passing day, the guilt tugged harder. Mom had issues with Adelle—that was obvious—but I didn’t. Maybe I could get to know my grandmother on my own terms, not my mother’s.

  At exactly four, Mom sprinted from the house with freedom on her mind. I ducked behind a car and watched her hike up the hill with determined steps.

  My heart beat double time as I crossed the street. On the porch, I raised my fist to the door, but didn’t knock. An ornamental box with Hebrew lettering, nailed to the doorframe, stopped me short.

  At a friend’s bar mitzvah in the seventh grade, I’d asked Mom about our nonexistent religious life. We’re human beings above everything else, she’d said. Typically, when Mom used the word God, it was attached to something profane. As for me, I didn’t know what I believed in, and so far, I’d been okay with not knowing.

  I pulled out my phone to Google Jewish and door. The search engine brought up the word I was looking for: mezuzah. I skimmed the Wikipedia entry about the variety of decorative cases designed to hold parchment with verses from the Torah.

  Adelle Friedman, my grandmother, had a mezuzah. I didn’t get it. Why hadn’t Mom told me we were Jewish? Or maybe it was my grandfather. But then why would Adelle hang one up when she’d moved to San Francisco after her husband had died?

  I wedged my phone into my back pocket and leaned against the wall, wondering why I’d come here. What was the point? It was already too late to know my grandmother. The disease had shrunk her brain. After hearing some of Mom’s stories, I didn’t think I’d care for the wholly intact version, anyway. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe I was better off staying away. It wasn’t too late to turn around and …

  I jumped from the wall as the buzzer sounded in the apartment. Great, I’d butt-rung the doorbell. My eyes skipped back to the mezuzah. I couldn’t help but wonder if God was sending me a message: Your grandmother is family.

  No, I couldn’t run away like a scared kid. I had to find out for myself if Adelle Friedman was the monster Mom made her out to be. It wasn’t that I thought Mom was lying, but she was definitely capable of exaggeration.

  I smoothed my hair and stepped onto the doormat. “Hi,” I whispered when Adelle finally got the door open. There was a hint of a smile on her face. I matched it, then raised her a grin of my own. “It’s me. Olivia. I mean, Livvy.”

  Adelle backed into the foyer, gesturing with her bent finger for me to follow.

  “Cookies?” she asked.

  “Oh, um, no thanks. I just ate.”

  In the kitchen, she brushed past me to the oven door. She bent down stiffly to peer through the glass window. “Do you know how to get them out of the heat?”

  The mitt on the counter was scarred with black burns, but when I opened the oven, it was cold. The cookies inside were burned disks. I set them down on top of an unwashed pot from another night’s dinner. Adelle didn’t take her eyes off me. Not wanting to appear rude, I plucked the least overdone cookie off the tray.

  “I’ve been trying to make them all day,” she said, putting the teapot on the back burner. She turned on all four gas flames.

  Oh, God. “These are really great, thanks,” I said.

  “I used to be a cook. The neighbors would stroll past the open window to get a whiff of roast goose with apples and salt and …” Her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Gottverdammt!” she shouted, marching over to the trash can to peer inside. “Gottverdammt, gottverdammt, gottverdammt!”

  That sounded like German—and not very nice German, either. Come to think of it, so was the name she’d called the neighbor’s dog: Scheisshund. Mom had never really said where Adelle had grown up.

  I followed my grandmother’s gaze to the trash can, topped with what looked like discarded chunks of coal, burned beyond recognition. Several batches of cookies had been thrown out. “Doesn’t my mother help you?” I asked gently.

  “Gretchen was ill today. I took care of her.”

  I imagined Mom spread out on the couch with a “headache.” My grandmother could have burned the house down on my mother’s watch.

  The teapot howled like a coyote calling its pack. Adelle transferred it to the counter but left the burners on. She shuffled back to the trash can, retrieved a cookie, and tossed the rock to me.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. When she turned around, I leaped across the room to turn the burners off and slid back into my chair.

  “Where’s Gretchen?” Adelle asked.

  “She went home.”

  Her face seemed to crumple in on itself. She must’ve thought I meant forever.

  “She’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, quickly adding, “It must be nice having my mom around to help, right?”

  “She’ll do.”

  Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

  “But she steals things,” Adelle said, wrinkling her nose.

  I almost dropped my cookie on the floor.

  “First she took my gloves, and then my keys. She wants me to think I’m going crazy so she can send me to an insane asylum.” She ground her fists into her eye sockets. “Herbert wouldn’t care for her plan. He wouldn’t care for it at all.”

  Herbert. My grandfather.

  Adelle’s voice was an urgent hiss. “That woman is out to get me, you know.”

  Paranoia. Mid-stage Alzheimer’s symptom. Still, I didn’t like that she thought this about Mom—even if it wasn’t worlds away from the truth.

  “My mother’s taking care of you so you can stay at home,” I explained. Though you might need to go to an assisted-care facility one day. “She’s happy to have this time with you.” When she looked away, I stuffed the charred cookie into my pocket.

  “She wants to stop me from doing everything I love, like baking for Herbert when he comes to call.”

  Panic roped around my chest, squeezing the breath from me. What if Mom had lied about my grandfather, too? Could he still be alive? I had no idea how old he’d be.

  “Where’s Herbert?” I whispered.

  “I’m friends with the dearly departed,” she said.

  I exhaled, relieved. My grandfather survived only in the snarled nest of Adelle’s brain.

  “What’s your name, dear?” she asked.

  I swallowed. “Livvy.”

  “Yes, Oh-livia, Livvy! That was my mother’s name.”

  Something else I hadn’t known. Thanks, Mom.

  Adelle looked around the kitchen as if there might be spies lurking behind the refrigerator. “Those people at the cuckoo farm want to steal my cookie recipe.” She tapped the side of her head. “They’ll have to torture me to get it. Unleash their ravenous mutts and whip me until I can no longer stand, and even then I will not tell.”

  Ravenous mutts? Whips? “There’s no one here but me,” I told her.

  She set a cup down on the table and poured the hot water into it, forgetting the tea bag. The water overflowed and dripped off the edge. I dropped a stack of napkins on the floor, sopping up the puddle with my foot.

  “Victoria says I have to sleep every day, but I don’t remember when, Oh-livia,” she said. “Is it time for my nap?”

  Victoria? Oh, right, Vickie—the other caregiver. Where was she, anyway? She was supposed to start her shift when Mom’s ended. I stood up. “I’m pretty sure it’s nap ti
me now, Adelle.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Sorry … uh, Grandma.” It felt weird saying it out loud, as if I was making it up.

  “Oma. Call me Oma. That’s what the Dutch children do.”

  “Was your … oma … from Holland?”

  She paused, the wrinkles on her forehead bunching together as if she was solving a complicated math problem. “All the great writers lived in the capital, you know.” She took off, limping down the hallway. She stopped at the front door and stood at attention like a porter at a fancy hotel. “You must come again.”

  “Sure. I’d like that.” I opened the door and escaped down the steps to the sidewalk. But then I stopped and turned around. I didn’t want to leave her alone like this.

  Right on cue, the other duplex door opened. A woman in her twenties stepped onto the porch. She was tall and thin, with short brown hair that clung to her scalp like a cap. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked Adelle.

  My grandmother looked at me. The woman tracked her gaze, spotting me.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “This is my granddaughter,” Adelle said proudly. “Her name is …”

  “Hello, Livvy! Your mother’s told me all about you. I’m Vickie.”

  Damn. Now this Vickie person would tell Mom about my visit. “Nice to meet you,” I said, climbing back up the steps.

  She shook my hand vigorously and turned to Adelle. “I thought you were trying to escape, you silly girl.”

  “It’s impossible to escape,” Adelle said. “No one makes it out alive.”

  “I can tell you’re in a hurry to go,” Vickie told me. “Has school already started for you?”

  I nodded, and she smiled. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She laid a hand on my grandmother’s shoulder and nudged her forward. “Go on, give your granddaughter some love.”

  We hugged awkwardly. Adelle rested her cheek on my shoulder, arms hanging at her sides as if she didn’t have a clue what to do with them.

  “Promise me you’ll visit again, Gretchen,” Adelle said in my ear. “Please, dear, please. Promise?”