Free The After Party by Anton DiSclafani Page A

it’s time.”
    I rested my spoon on the wide rim of the bowl, dabbed the corners of my mouth with my napkin before meeting Mary’s eye.
    â€œTime?” I asked, though I knew exactly what she meant.
    â€œTime,” Mary said. “Time to move on from Evergreen. I’m sure you’re tired of living with us old fuddy-duddies.” She laughed. And then, as if just noticing me, cut herself short. “You do know what I mean, don’t you, Cecilia? I mean move into the penthouse. Move into the penthouse and wait for Joan.” She pressed her finger to her lips. “She can’t stay gone forever.”
    I wanted to weep. I dumbly looked around the breakfast room, at the pine table where Joan and I had sat a hundred—no, a thousand—times. At the armoire that housed extra china. And then at Dorie, who stood at the door to the kitchen, watching me. I wanted Idie. I could smell her. I remembered how perfectly I had fit underneath her chin when I sat on her lap as a child. Dorie shook her head before she stepped back into the kitchen, the gesture nearly imperceptible, but I understood: the Fortiers were not my family.
    With Joan gone, it was easy to forget that Mary and Furlow weren’t my parents. I slept in their daughter’s room. I ate meals with them. They’d given me a gold charm bracelet for graduation, a gold “J” dangling from a link. “It’s your real name, is it not?” Mary asked, when I touched the letter with my finger. She’d kissed my cheek, and I’d felt loved. It was a rare moment of affection from Mary. Mary was kind to me, but I would not have called her affectionate. Yet I felt like I deserved her affection: I was behaving more like a daughter than Joan. I was good, as Joan was not.
    Mary stood over me—towered, a woman like that alwaystowered—and I wanted her to touch me so desperately I could almost feel her hand on my shoulder. She did not.
    She remained standing longer than necessary. She gazed at me, not fondly, exactly, but not meanly, either. I couldn’t discern it. Things were not as they seemed, I felt, suddenly. Things were being kept from me. And then as quickly as the feeling had come over me, it disappeared, because Mary leaned down and kissed my cheek.
    Mary and Furlow were generous; where I would go was never in question. But now I understand that generosity had little to do with it. They wanted everything in Joan’s life to be the same, so that when she returned she could slip back into it as if she had never left in the first place.
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    B y the next day I was in downtown Houston. It was July, blazing; before I mustered the energy to get dressed I sat in front of the window unit in my bra and panties to cool off. Ciela had come over to help me unpack—though there was nothing to unpack. All my clothes had been hung neatly in my closet, all my toiletries placed in the stainless-steel bathroom cabinet. I had been relieved to see that all Joan’s clothes were there, too.
    It never even occurred to me that I should spend my own money, waiting for me in a bank account downtown, and get my own place. My inheritance, already substantial, had grown since my mother’s death, due to the wise investments of faceless men. I wasn’t as wealthy as Joan, of course, but I could take care of myself for the rest of my life if I needed to, and live well. I hated the sightof the monthly statements that arrived in the mail from the Second National Bank of Houston, tucked them away, unopened, in the drawer of my nightstand. Instead of a mother binding me to the world, I had a stack of papers stamped with numbers I never read.
    Ciela walked in, took one look at the large glass windows, and dubbed the place the Specimen Jar.
    There had been whispers, lately, that the feds were going to try Ciela’s father for money laundering, but Ciela seemed impervious to them.