All Good Children Read online

  The front door opens in the foyer, around the corner from the living room, so I can’t see them but I hear him being pleasant and it’s weird. They’re probably shaking hands as he welcomes her in. “You must be, oh and I’m, and come on in, and right this way, and make yourself comfortable.”

  She precedes him through the doorway and if his hand is not pressed against the small of her back I know he wishes it were. She stops in front of the bookcase and looks at me, smiling without showing her teeth. Jason steps around her and finally notices me, and I can see his anger in the way his eyes narrow and his fake smile falters and he pinches the pocket of his slacks, but he can’t say anything in front of her. I don’t stand up.

  He speaks to her instead. “Mrs. Omalis, this is my sister Jordan.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” she says to me, and she sounds British but only a little. She turns to my brother and touches his arm when she says, “It’s Miss Omalis.”

  His sheepish smile masks his hard-on. He directs her to my dad’s chair next to the couch.

  “My dad’s out with the livestock right now,” he tells her. “But he should be back any minute. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Yes, thank you, a glass of water?”

  She says it like a question, like she’s not sure we have plumbing out here, like she’s never heard of a well. I’m surprised Jason didn’t go straight for the brandy. Mom would’ve.

  Before he leaves the room, he looks at me. “Jordan, you want to help me?”

  “No,” I say. I don’t even look at him. I’ll get it later, but right now, this is too much fun.

  He leaves before he says something he can’t take back.

  There would be uncomfortable silence except Jeremy is still pounding away at his minor keys and there isn’t a door thick enough in this house to drown it out. She looks in the direction of the stairs and her smile returns.

  “Who’s upstairs?”

  I’m sure she already knows, so I cross my arms and look at my shoes. There’s still dirt on the bottoms, probably manure too, but the cookie smell will cover it up. I kind of want a cookie, maybe Jason will bring a plate out with her water. I bet he does.

  The sounds of her opening her briefcase draw my eyes away from my feet. She’s pulling out a folder and a clipboard. She snaps the case shut and sets it back against the side of the chair. Dad bought that chair at a flea market before any of us were born, and Mom crocheted a blanket that hangs over its back and arms to hide the holes and tears. He rocked me to sleep in that chair, he let me stay up late and watch old movies. She takes out a pen and starts writing.

  Without saying anything, I move to the other side of the couch, closer to her. She smells like tulip petals. Mom keeps a garden out behind the barn and this woman smells like Mom’s hands do when it’s rose season. Tulips and roses are two different flowers. How does she do it? One is her shampoo, and the other is her perfume. She’s looking at me.

  “What grade are you in, Jordan?”

  It’s probably too much if I roll my eyes, but I have no gum to chew obstinately so you work with what you’ve got.

  She laughs a little, it sounds almost like she’s humming, but it’s a laugh. She marks something on her clipboard and without looking back up at me, says, “Do you want to tell your parents about your new jewelry, or shall I?”

  My hand goes instinctively to my stomach. It’s still a little sore. Of course she’d blackmail me, of course.

  “Do they have to know?” I ask, giving her control, as if I had any of it to begin with.

  “Perhaps not,” she says, looking at me again. “What grade are you in?”

  Her pupils are small but they undulate, her irises shimmering like the surfaces of pools. Her hair is so straight she must use an iron to keep it just so. I wish she made noise when she moved her arm, the sounds of her clothes creasing and crinkling; I wish I could hear it when she swallowed.

  “Ninth,” I say.

  She marks it down. “Do you like it?”

  I can hear Mom’s voice in my ear telling me to be enthusiastic, to boast of my perfect attendance and test scores, and segue naturally into how I’ve always wanted to teach and help today’s youth become the leaders of tomorrow. There are too many lies in that to untangle, and I don’t see the real difference in being me or being the lie, so I’ll let the rest of them experiment with becoming statistics and leave me out of it.

  “It passes the time,” I say, and I hope she knows what I mean. I want to see it in her eyes that she knows, but she blinks and turns back to her clipboard and makes another mark. Her eyeshadow is darker up close.

  The piano stops, the back door slams. Two male voices waft in from the kitchen with the waning odor of the cookies I’m beginning to think don’t really exist.

  “Your father?” she asks, pointing through the doorway with her pen.

  The front door opens and closes loudly and she walks into the room knowing what she’ll find so her back is straighter and her smile is on.

  “My mother,” I say.

  There hasn’t been a day Mom’s come home from the hospital in anything but her floral scrubs, yet here she is, shrugging off her coat with an unselfconscious smile to reveal an eggshell-blue blouse and just-below-the-knee black skirt. Plain brown leather belt, pumps. Tasteful. Where are those damn cookies?

  The woman rises to her feet to greet her, and my mom steps forward, her coat thrown over one arm, the other extended.

  “Hello, you must be Heaven Omalis,” Mom says, and they shake, and she’s still smiling away.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fontaine. I’ve just been getting acquainted with your lovely daughter.”

  Growing up with two older brothers you’d think I’d be attuned to sarcasm, but all I catch is a look of disdain on Mom’s face when she sees what I’m wearing. Omalis is still smiling.

  “Have you? I’m sure she’s been most accommodating.” Ah, there’s the sarcasm. “Please, sit.”

  Omalis smoothes out her skirt and sits in one graceful motion. Mom drapes her coat over the arm of the sofa and sits on the other end, spending several awkward seconds trying to figure out how to cross her legs. At the ankle, like a lady. Even I know that.

  To me, she says, “Forget to do your laundry?”

  Her hair is thin and it’s the most unattractive thing about her. It just lies there on top of her head like it’s waiting for you to tell it to do something, but then it would probably just ignore you anyway. It’s brown and plain and doesn’t at all go with her eyes, deep green, so emphatic you know they’re saying something but you’re the one who’s not listening. She tried to get a perm once but the curls didn’t take. I think she should shave her head and get a wig, one that suits her, maybe raven black and wispy, licorice red and full.

  “We ran out of detergent,” I tell her. There, excuse taken care of, back to the niceties.

  “You have a very warm home, Mrs. Fontaine,” Omalis says.

  We both look at her. For a second, I think my mom is going to say something about turning down the thermostat, or something corny like, “Well, it is filled with love,” but she clasps her hands in her lap and offers a pleasant thank you on the lips of the smile she’s trying so hard not to look strained. I know she wants to bite her hangnails, but she keeps her hands folded in her lap.

  Jason appears in the doorway from the back, a tray carefully balanced in his hands. He sets it on the table and apologizes for taking so long. A glass of water, a cup of tea, and lo and behold, a plate of cookies.

  “Mom, the tea is for you,” he says. “I know how you like to wind down after a long day at work.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Mom says, taking the mug, surprised and delighted. Like she hasn’t been training him all week.

  “Dad just got in,” he says to the room. “He wants me to apologize on his behalf; he felt it was only a courtesy to shower before he joins us.”

  My mom twitters like a circus bird on crack. I lean in for a
cookie but she grabs my wrist and gently places my arm back in my lap. She looks at me sidelong so quickly I don’t think anyone else catches it. When I was little we used to bake cookies together and it wasn’t any fun unless there was a flour fight, and there always was, right at the end; we would bathe in it, and it would stain our skin and dry us out and then we’d put on our swimsuits and take a shower together, and she would smell like flour and baking soda and vanilla for days. Today, she smells like the mall’s latest free sample.

  “Jason,” Mom says, “could you run upstairs and get your brother?”

  Jason nods and walk-runs up the stairs. I run a finger under the bracelet on my left wrist and snap it against the skin. The beads knock together but Mom doesn’t look, and Omalis is asking questions again.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Oh, what has it been now? Thirteen years, just a bit after Jordan was born.” She puts her hand on my knee. It isn’t warm. “Before that, we lived in Hazard, Kentucky, where Jay helped with his father’s farm. But—you know men and their ambitions—Jay had to have a farm of his own, wanted to get into the cattle-ranching business, so here we are.”

  “It’s a lovely place,” Omalis says. The more she speaks the more uncertain I am of her accent, because the vowels are rounder than with the accents I hear on TV but the lilt is the same. “I wonder if I might be able to take a tour before I leave, hmm?”

  She makes that sound, “hmm,” come out of her like it just melted out, like it was in there all this time just slowly building up until it got the chance to spill over, and it’s so buttery and soft, how can you deny it?

  “Of course, my husband would love—”

  “Perhaps Jason could show me around,” she cuts in, “while we chat.”

  Mom falters only slightly, it’s fairly impressive really, how only the veins in her neck constrict and her temple pulses once, and it passes. No involuntary eye twitch or hard swallow or sporadic fluttering of limbs. She’s been practicing.

  “Jason would adore that,” she says. “He really knows his way around the farm. I think he enjoys helping his father around the stables more than just about anything else.”

  I think he’ll enjoy eye-humping Miss Omalis as he lets her walk ahead of him through the stables, offering to saddle up Grady just so he can cop a feel as he helps her onto the horse’s back.

  My brothers clamber down the stairs like schoolboys on Christmas morning. Jason slows his pace when he hits the landing, Jeremy following at his heels. Jeremy is wearing a black sweater and black Dockers and a pair of Dad’s loafers. He didn’t shave, the fair whiskers hang loosely above his upper lip, and his hair is so gelled you could ice-skate on it. Mom pats the cushion between us and he sits down.

  “Jason, grab some chairs from the dining room,” Mom says.

  “Oh no, Jason, don’t bother with that,” Omalis says, waving a hand that bends like a wilting flower over her slender wrist. Slender but strong, I see that, from this close up. “It really would be more expedient to simply interview each child individually, no need to wait for the entire family to be present.”

  “Jay will only be a moment—”

  While Mom wages her gentle protest, I watch the front of Jason’s pants, trying to see if his boner shriveled up when Miss Omalis referred to him as a child. The dress pants are too spacious to tell.

  “I don’t want to take up any more of your time than is necessary,” Omalis continues. “Running a farm is very consuming work, I know. So I’ll dispense with the pleasantries here and skip right to the formalities.”

  She uncrosses and re-crosses her legs, left over right this time, at the knee. She’s not wearing pantyhose. The dimples in her naked knee wink at me as she rambles to my mother.

  “We just need to make sure that you fully understand and appreciate what I’ll be doing here today, and that we have your full compliance. I’ll be conducting a short interview with each of your children, during which I will administer a brief oral psychological examination. I’m here to observe and record, not to assess, you understand. I will present my observations after I leave here and the final analysis will be made, at which time I will return here and let you know the decision. This process usually takes no longer than one week.”

  There is a pause in Omalis’s preamble and I expect to hear Mom’s voice, but when it doesn’t come I look at her. Her eyes are closed and she’s holding Jeremy’s hand.

  “Mrs. Fontaine,” Omalis says. She leans over her clipboard, and her lilt drops an octave. If the space between her chair and my Mom’s position on the sofa were not so wide, I think she’d take her hand. “It is very important, Mrs. Fontaine, that you realize my presence here is not a final judgment. It is simply a step, and it could very well lead nowhere.”

  This is supposed to be comforting but Mom doesn’t let go of Jeremy’s hand or open her eyes. Omalis is wearing lip gloss instead of lipstick and I bet it has a flavor, something fruity.

  “I’ll go first,” Jason says in the silence. “For the interviews.”

  Omalis’s smile is placating. “I think I’d like to save you for last.”

  He’ll have wet dreams over that single sentence for weeks.

  “Let’s start with the youngest, shall we?” She says. “Work our way up, yes?”

  Mom rises with Miss Omalis and finally drops Jeremy’s hand. “The dining room is all set up, or the patio, there’s a great view.” She’s trying.

  “I think, actually, I’d like to see Jordan’s room, if she wouldn’t mind.”

  Mom’s frown is almost comical. Before she has a chance to say anything, I plop my feet on the floor and shoot up, grabbing a handful of cookies as I make my way to the stairs. “Come on,” I toss over my shoulder.

  I hear my mother twitter nervously. “I’d ask you to pardon her as she was born in a barn, but it seems too obvious.”

  I like that Omalis doesn’t laugh. Her footsteps follow me to the attic.

  The attic stairs aren’t steep but they’re no picnic either, though obviously this woman is fit enough to climb them without breaking a sweat. I usually make it to the top slightly winded myself, but I hold back this time, forcing myself to release air in measured exhalations. I slump onto my bed immediately and watch her mount the last step, twisting on the landing to look at me. Her eyes trail over me and continue on to my nightstand, which is really an old cedar chest with who-knows-what inside, and to my dresser, magazines spilling out from beneath it, and to the clothes strewn across the floor, the stuffed animals on the cushion-less wooden rocking chair at the foot of my bed. I keep meaning to shove them in one of those boxes meshed together at the other end of the attic but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  “You can move that stuff,” I tell her, indicating the rocking chair. “If you want to sit.”

  I fill my mouth with a cookie so she can’t launch into her questions right away.

  Miss Omalis goes to the chair, leans her briefcase against the wall, and sets her clipboard on the bed so she can carefully pick each animal up individually and place it neatly on the mattress, leaning each comfortably against the wall. I’m sure Mr. Blue Bunny and Mrs. Pink Walrus are very much obliged. I chew my cookie and watch her. She doesn’t seem at all self-conscious; I’m waiting for her to pat Green Turtle’s head or maybe give his chin a nice quick chuck.

  Finally, she sits down, smooths out her skirt again, and picks up her clipboard. I expect her to push a finger against the bridge of her glasses until I remember she isn’t wearing any, which is a shame really because they would suit her quite well, especially with that accent.

  “Impressive collection,” she says, eyeing her arrangement. “Do you have names for them?”

  “Sure,” I say. I don’t, but she went through a lot of trouble. “That one is Sigmund, that’s Mary Shelley, the one behind her is David Cassidy, that one’s Puck, and the one on the end is Mrs. Lovett. The other three are just numbers, in the order I got them.”

&nb
sp; I’m sure she’ll have fun psychoanalyzing all those name choices, even though I don’t see the point to it anyway, like my fate wasn’t sealed along with everyone else’s long before we were even born, like I should really believe any of the things she said downstairs.

  She smiles at my answer, only a half one, kind of lazy but it still crinkles the corners of her eyes. She scribbles something on her clipboard.

  “How long have you lived in the attic?” She asks.

  I shrug and reach behind me to fold my pillow, kicking my legs, dirty shoes and all, up onto the bed. Mom would love that. “I don’t know, a year or something.”

  “Do you like it better?”

  I rest my head against the folded pillow and stare over my knees at Miss Omalis. The final cookie bobs slowly up and down on my stomach. “Better than what?”

  “It affords quite a bit more privacy,” she says. “I should think any teenage girl would relish even a modicum of that rarity, in a house with two older brothers.”

  “Privacy to do what?” If I keep her talking maybe she’ll run over time on this appointment and have to end it short; maybe she’ll realize I’m just being ornery and give up.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She swipes a hand breezily through the air, painting a picture. “Journal, have your friends over, sleep in silence, think without interruption, pierce something.”

  “We didn’t do it here,” I say reflexively.

  The corners of her mouth dimple. “It was only an example.”

  If she were my friend, I’d kick a stuffed animal at her, or call her something I didn’t really mean, or flick her off. As it is, I avert my eyes from hers and bring my wrist up to my mouth, the one with the bracelet, and nibble at the beads. She still hasn’t asked about it.

  “Why can’t you tell your mother?”

  My belly laugh nearly topples the cookie off my stomach.

  “She’ll freak out?” She offers. It sounds like she hasn’t used that phrase in probably a decade.

  “I think so,” I say.

  “But that’s why you did it in the first place, right?”

  When I look at her, she’s got that lazy smile on again, and I wish I were close enough to smell her shampoo.