in a museum.
“What else do I want from you? I want you to stop behaving like some lovesick teenager.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not?” She stared a moment and then shook her head and smiled. “Okay, what’s your problem today, little sister? The boy you have a thing for at school won’t look your way?”
“I don’t have any problems, and I don’t have any thing for any boys in my school,” I said, realizing too late how defensive I sounded.
She laughed skeptically, sat on the edge of my four-poster dark walnut bed, and then threw herself back on my oversize pillow. We rarely had what I would call a close sister-to-sister conversation, from what I understood those conversations were like when I saw them on television or heard girls in my class talk about their older sisters. Ava had stepped too quickly into the surrogate mother’s role Brianna had played, but maybe, now that I was older, she would be different, I thought. Her life was different. Why wouldn’t mine be as well?
At Daddy’s suggestion, Ava was attending classes at UCLA in Westwood, California, but she didn’t seem to have any real interest in them. She did it because it was something Daddy told her to do. It was the way we were all raised. When Daddy spoke, everything stopped. Even the earth paused in its spinning.
We had been living in Brentwood, on a side street just off Sunset Boulevard, for three years now. It was quite rural, with surrounding woods and acreage. The nearest house was far enough away for us to feel as if we had no neighbors. Daddy liked to move every few years. I had gone to school in three different states since first grade: upstate New York; Nashville, Tennessee; and now California. We always attended private schools that Daddy carefully chose, no matter how expensive they were.
Daddy was wealthy through inheritance but also because of what Mrs. Fennel said were brilliant investments through the years. Praising Daddy was at least one thing Mrs. Fennel would do frequently and fully. It was practically the only subject that interested her enough to talk about: Daddy’s wonderful qualities. She did sound like a proud mother. According to her, there was no one stronger, no one smarter, no one more successful than my daddy. A day rarely passed without her telling us how lucky we were to have him and how important it was for us to please him.
She didn’t have to do much persuading. Daddy really was the most charming, traveled, and educated man I had ever seen or heard. He was elegant and handsome in a very aristocratic way. People who met him for the first time believed he was from a European royal family. There was something Old World about him, in his demeanor, his manners, his way of speaking and eating. I often thought he could be a prince. I believed that someday, he might very well inherit a throne or be called back to occupy a castle in some exotic country. In my daydreams, I saw myself being treated like a little princess because of Daddy. The sapphire ring he wore on his right pinkie was set in gold and looked like the sort of ring a king might wear for his subjects to kiss, the way Catholics kiss the ring of a bishop. Ava wore a smaller, feminine version on her pinkie, and I recalled Brianna had one, too.
Daddy had friends everywhere, and all of them seemed highly educated and wealthy. I was to call some of them Uncle or Aunt when they visited, and they always brought gifts for all of us. Some were as young-looking as Daddy, but some looked more like Mrs. Fennel. What I observed and was proud to see was how deferential they were to Daddy, no matter how old they appeared. They did treat him as if he was royalty and they were his loyal subjects. Occasionally, one or more of these uncles and aunts were upset when they arrived and then were quickly ushered into a room away from any of us. Only Mrs. Fennel was permitted to be there. Regardless of how upset our guests might have been when they arrived, they left smiling and confident again.
It didn’t surprise me. No matter what time of the day it was or what he was doing at the time, Daddy never seemed flustered. It was as if there was nothing in this world that could surprise him. He had a calm, even demeanor that impressed anyone he met and put him or her at ease almost immediately. No one, except maybe Mrs. Fennel, knew his exact age, not even Ava or Brianna. He really did seem to possess the wisdom of a man centuries old, even though it was difficult to believe he was more than forty-five or fifty.
When was he born? Where was he born? Who were his parents? Those were questions I thought Mrs. Fennel would never answer. I asked Daddy how old he was, of course, but he only smiled and said, “Guess,” or “You tell me, and that will be my age.”
When I asked him where he was born, he said he’d been too young to remember. He always joked but never revealed anything.
Ava didn’t seem to care, and when I asked her what she thought, she looked at me as if it were a question that had never occurred to her. How could that be? I wondered. What made her so different from me? At times, she took on that expression Daddy had, that far-off look that made me feel as if he didn’t know I was there.
As far as I knew, Ava was the only one of us who was Daddy’s natural child. She claimed it was something she had learned only recently, and, contrary to how I would feel if I learned such a wonderful thing, she seemed angry when she learned that Daddy had fallen in love with someone and married her. It was as if love were a disease, Daddy had been infected, and she was the result. She made it sound as if she were a scar.
“What’s wrong with falling in love?” I asked her when she complained.
“Love is poison for us,” she replied, and would say no more about it, no matter how many times I asked.
If it had been responsible for my being Daddy’s natural daughter, I thought, I wouldn’t call it poison.
At times, Ava looked so much like Daddy that it was as if she were cloned. Rarely, if ever, did Daddy talk about Ava’s mother, and Ava hated to talk about her. She would get furious with me if I made the smallest reference to her. All I knew was what I had gleaned from Mrs. Fennel and the tidbits Daddy revealed. Her name was Sophia. I was told she had died in childbirth.
“Were there any pictures of your mother?” I asked her once.
“If there were, I don’t care to see them,” she told me.
“Aren’t you even a little curious about her?”
“No!” she said, practically shouting back at me. “Stop talking about her. For all I know or care, I was hatched, understand? Not born. You can consider me half an orphan.”
How could she be even half an orphan? She at least knew who her mother was and who her father was, although Daddy was as real in my mind and in my affections as any daddy could be. Why was she so bitter about her mother, treating her as someone who had tricked or corrupted Daddy? How had he met her, anyway? What made her so different from other women he had known? Why couldn’t anyone talk about it? Why did we all have to swim in so much mystery? Sometimes I thought I would surely drown in it. I was barely keeping my head above water with the little bits of information Mrs. Fennel threw in my direction from time to time as it was. I felt like some caged animal kept moments away from starvation.
Ava had one of those Mrs. Fennel impatient and annoyed expressions on her face right now.
“Come off it, Lorelei. Stop giving me that innocent look. You don’t lie here in your room and just listen to your music,” she continued, lying on my bed and looking up at the ceiling. “You lie here and fantasize about sex with one or another of the boys in your school, fantasize about wonderful kisses, their tongues on your tongue, their lips moving down your neck as they slowly undress you,” she said softly, with such an erotic feeling I felt myself tingle.
She turned on her side to look at me. Her breasts ballooned, and her eyes brightened impishly. How could any man resist her, resist those inviting lips? Would I ever have her power? It both excited and frightened me to think I would.
“I…”
“Please. Don’t bother denying it. I can practically hear your dreams through the wall, and I know the reason you’re so flushed sometimes. It comes washing down over you, doesn’t it? You feel like you might drown in your own sex,