Mother, I thought—what a panic she must be in by now. There wasn’t one day since we were born that Haylee or I was somewhere without the other, even if it meant the other had to sit and wait and be bored. All our dentist and doctor appointments were made back-to-back, alternating between my being first and her being first. For the first time in a long time, I was glad Mother was so intense about us being together. Right now, I’d be the last to complain about her considering us two halves of the same perfect daughter.
“You can get up and go to the bathroom,” Anthony said when I didn’t respond. “Don’t forget to wash your hands. If I ever forgot, my mother would seize me on my ear and spin me around to go back and do it. She’d do that in front of my friends. Even when I was eighteen!”
I did have to pee, so I rose slowly and, dragging the chain behind me, went into the bathroom with no door. He could look in and see me, but he was busy preparing our breakfast. I saw that he had put new soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush still in its packaging in the cabinet above the sink. There were also other typical bathroom items like aspirin, dental floss, Band-Aids of all sizes, itch cream, disinfectant, and other things to treat toothaches. There was a rack beside the sink with clean towels and washcloths. Beside that on the rug-covered floor was a basket for laundry.
What the bathroom did not have was a mirror. Right now, I didn’t want to look at myself anyway. I was afraid I might just scream and scream.
After I washed and dried my hands, I came out and gazed around the basement apartment again, an apartment he claimed he had lived in from the age of twelve, something that he said made his friends jealous. He had his own apartment and all that privacy. Perhaps, however, his parents simply wanted him out of their sight. Listening between the lines of things he said, I imagined they hadn’t been pleased with how he was turning out, so they had shoved him downstairs—especially, from the sound of it, his father.
The only two windows down here were boarded up on the outside. The walls were paneled in light wood. There was an old, heavy-cushioned brown sofa that looked worn like old family furniture, a small dark-wood coffee table all nicked up, and a dark-wood bookcase on the wall behind the sofa. Besides books, there were little figurines and toys on the shelves, model planes and model cars, things you would find in a little boy’s room. Next to the shelves were drawings pinned to the walls. They looked like the drawings a child would make of mountains and trees. In many of them there was a cat that resembled Mr. Moccasin. How old could he be? If it was him in the pictures, he would be an old cat, unless those drawings were recent, which would be frightening because they were so childish.
The concrete floor was partially covered with thick, tight area rugs in faded colors. They also looked like hand-me-downs. Directly in front of me was a metal sink, a counter with a linoleum surface, a small two-door refrigerator, and an oven and range with a teapot and a saucepan. There was a cabinet above it, and beside it was a closet without any doors. The shelves were stocked with boxes of cereal and rice, cans of soup, and other things, and on the counter was a bread box. All the pipes and wires were visible, looking like it was all just thrown together.
The bed I had been forced to sleep in was a double with a metal headboard, two large light-blue pillows, and a light-blue comforter that did look brand-new. It had a lilac scent. There were two wooden side tables that looked like a lighter oak wood, and a dark-wood dresser with half a dozen drawers. There was another tight area rug as well, but it was a lot more threadbare than the rest.
He had set the small dark-wood kitchen table. There were only two chairs, one on each end, not matching, both with ribbed backs and seats that had the color washed out of them. He was pouring orange juice.
“I hope you’re hungry,” he said. “I’m starving.” He pulled out what was to be my chair. “Madame,” he said.
I stood there staring at him. He really was acting as though I wasn’t a prisoner but a guest instead, and that frightened me almost more than anything else.
“Madame,” he repeated, raising his voice with more firmness.
His smile was sliding away like a thin sheet of ice. His dull brown eyes looked like they darkened and his sharply cut chin tightened, the tension rippling down his neck and emphasizing his Adam’s apple. I thought I had better go to the table.
“Comfortable?” he said after I sat.
I stared down at the table and didn’t speak. My heart was pounding so hard I thought he might be able to hear it.
“Drink your juice,” he ordered, the sharpness in his command revealing his growing annoyance with me. “The French toast is ready.”
He stood over me and took a step closer. My throat ached from the crying I had already done. Even though I had finally fallen asleep beside him, I was quite exhausted, my whole body as tight as a fist the whole time and most of the night. It felt like my blood had frozen. With my hand trembling, I reached for the glass of orange juice. He stood there waiting for me to drink from it.
“It’s freshly squeezed,” he said. “I bet your mother didn’t give you freshly squeezed every morning.”
She did often, but I wouldn’t speak. I drank all the juice, and he returned to the stove and brought back a platter of French toast with a small white pitcher shaped like a cow full of maple syrup that you could pour out of th
e cow’s mouth.
“I bought this for my mom when I was ten,” he said. “With my own money I earned helping. But my father thought it was too silly to put on our kitchen table, so I brought it down here. You don’t think it’s too silly, do you?”
I simply stared at it. We actually had one like it in our house.
“Yeah, I knew you’d agree,” he said, as if I had replied. “This really smells good, don’t it?” He served a few pieces of French toast to me and then put the maple syrup right in front of me. “Use what you want.”
He poured us each a cup of coffee.
“Milk and sugar? I drink it black.”
When I didn’t respond, he put the milk and the sugar bowl closer to me and then began to pour maple syrup on his own French toast. My stomach was still in knots, but I couldn’t resist the aroma, and although I hated to admit it, it did look good. I poured some maple syrup on mine. He laughed as it came out of the cow’s mouth.
“My father thought anything that came out of it was cow puke. He was a hard-ass sometimes, like I told you.”
I began to eat, convincing myself that I needed my strength if I was ever going to find a way out of here. But I was also afraid I would heave up anything I swallowed. I knew instinctively that if I did, he would probably become enraged.
“This is great, isn’t it?” He smiled and spread his arms as if he was about to embrace the whole world. “Just look at us, our first breakfast together. Freshly squeezed juice, delicious French toast, organic syrup just as you preferred, and fresh brew. I don’t usually eat like this for breakfast, even on weekends, but every morning will be special now. Every day and every night will be, too!
“So here’s the plan,” he continued, leaning over the table toward me, his voice full of what sounded like a little boy’s excitement. His bushy eyebrows lifted as the dark creases ran quickly along his forehead, looking like thin stains of motor oil. “You’ll clean up. Normally, I’d help, but I’ve got to get going. I’m never late for work. Mother taught me that tardiness is a sin. I was never late to school, either, and one year, I didn’t miss a day, no sick days. I got a certificate for it. I’ll show it to you later, or maybe I’ll pin it up on the wall now that there’s someone else to look at it.”