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EVE KNOX
Friday, December 22, 1995
7:05 a.m.
Eve sat on the edge of the bathtub staring at the blue tiles, trying to think of a way to keep Nola from telling their mother about the bruises.
They called this room the Larimar Bathroom even though it was the only bathroom in the house. Many years ago, Nola christened it Larimar after seeing a picture of the pale blue mineral in a book she borrowed from the library. So now it became the Larimar, like it was some fancy hotel powder room with gilded mirrors instead of a pukey-yellow-and-blue bathroom with a leaky faucet, moldy tub and shower and cracked tiled floor. Maybe it would be better if it all came out. How Nick treated her, the name-calling, the pushing and roughness. He always claimed he was just joking, that she was overreacting. Was she? And anyway, who would even believe her? She was a nobody.
Now Nola rapped on the locked bathroom door. “Hurry up, I need to get in there!” she yelled.
“Just a minute,” Eve called back. She was biding time, wanting to leave for school at the very last minute so she didn’t have to talk to her mom. She rose and leaned heavily against the sink and looked in the mirror. Her mother’s crimson handprint was long gone and the small cut, now covered with concealer, was barely noticeable.
Her mother had never hit her before. Never. She yelled and screamed and threw things once in a while but never once had she gotten physical with her daughters.
For a fleeting moment, Eve wondered what might happen if one of her teachers noticed the mark on her face. They would have to call family services and report an incident of possible abuse, right? Eve would be hauled into the counselor’s office and asked a million questions. What happened to your face? Does your mother hit you often? Are you afraid to go home?
Then, she imagined, a social worker, a gray-haired woman with tired eyes but a reassuring smile, would show up at their house and inform their mother that the children were being removed from the home pending an investigation.
Eve quickly slammed the door on this scenario. She didn’t want to leave home. Not now anyway. She just wanted her mother to leave her alone and for Nola to be normal. She’d be moving out of the house in a few years anyway, hopefully going off to college and it would be nice to know they’d be okay without her.
“Eve! We’re going to miss the bus!” Nola pounded each word out on the door.
Eve took a breath. The key was not to engage. Not to get caught up in her mother’s roller coaster of emotions and in Nola being Nola. She opened the door, her face a blank canvas. “I’m walking today, Nola.”
“Walking?” Nola repeated. “We can’t walk, it’s cold outside. Come on, if we hurry, we’ll make the bus.”
“I want to walk today. It’s not that cold out.” Eve breezed into her bedroom, went to her closet and pulled out a long multicolored scarf that was as wonderful as it was hideous. Knitted together in an array of pink, red, purple, blue and green blocks with fat, furry yellow puff balls dangling from the ends, Eve knew she had to have it when Maggie spotted it last winter at a secondhand shop in Maquoketa.
When she arrived home with it wrapped around her neck, Nola had scoffed. That is one butt-ugly scarf.
Someone made this with their own two hands, Eve marveled. She picked out the colors and the yarn...
Someone color-blind, Nola interrupted.
Maybe she sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire or on the front porch and pieced it all together, Eve had mused. I love it.
And she had worn it every cold day since. Eve looped it around her neck, retrieved her backpack and started down the steps.
“Whatever,” Nola called after her. “Go ahead and freeze to death. I don’t care.”
“Eve,” came her mother’s voice from the kitchen. “Eve, are you leaving? Aren’t you even going to say goodbye?” she asked as Eve opened the front door and stepped outside into the cold, brisk morning. It was still dark outside and no streetlights lined their street but both the Harper and Kennedy houses had their front porch lights on.
She wanted to tell Maggie about breaking up with Nick, wanted to just talk. Eve had been so consumed with Nick the past few months that she was just realizing how quiet and withdrawn Maggie had been.
Now she wondered if Maggie had been sick or if something was going on at home. Colin was always in some kind of trouble and Eve had walked in on a number of shouting matches between Colin and Chief Kennedy. Well, Chief Kennedy yelled and Colin just kind of simmered.
Once Eve’s second home, the Kennedy house had taken on an aura of anxiety and unease. When Eve did go over there, Maggie rushed them up to her bedroom and shut the door soundly against the tension below.
There was a time when Eve would simply announce her presence with a loud hello and then let herself into the Kennedy home, but not anymore. She never knew what argument she might walk in on and instead knocked and waited for someone to answer. Colin opened the door. “She’s upstairs,” he said. “But I’d turn around and go home—she’s in a mood.” Colin was dressed in his usual uniform of black jeans and paint-splattered black tee. He held on to the door frame with fingers that were perpetually smudged with black ink and brightly colored paint from the shop and art classes he took at school.
“I’ll take my chances,” Eve said squeezing past him.
“I warned you,” he called after her as she ran up the stairs. When she reached the top she glanced back down to find that Colin was gone. Colin was like that. One minute he was there, the next minute he disappeared. He always stayed off to the side, moved along the periphery watching, listening. He never had much to say, but Eve figured that when he did talk it was filled with ideas that were too big for a small town like Grotto.
Maggie’s bedroom door was closed and like the front entrance, there was a time when she would burst right in, but it had been such a long while since they spent any time together, she felt shy, hesitant. She rapped lightly on the door and was immediately answered with a, “Go away, Colin!”
“It’s me,” Eve called through the door. There was a moment of silence then the sound of footsteps across the wood floor. The door opened and Maggie stood before her, eyes red-rimmed and swollen.
