to swing, she yearned for that night’s dinner, could almost smell rosemary and chives on her fingertips and the scent of the pot roast with mashed potatoes and okra cooked to perfection wafting through the house. She loved the comforting clinks the fork made against the fine china as she scraped off every last morsel of food.
Quinn forced herself to abandon this culinary vision—after all, she was waiting on the porch for her father and her new mother to show. He hadn’t given her a time or date, just said he’d pick her up—and so Quinn had been waiting out on the porch for the second day in a row, waiting for a car to kick up a cloud of dust on the winding road up to the house.
Quinn stared at the cracked floorboards. She mistook the fissures for spilled paint but then looked closer and recognized an orderly army of ants marching along it, carrying food back and forth. Soon there’d be hundreds, even thousands more, carrying away everything in the house, and even though they were small and insignificant, moving mountains seemed only a matter of time. She hated insects, bugs, beetles—pests, all of them. She didn’t even like butterflies.
Kneeling down, she was painfully aware of her stomach pushing against her lungs, forcing her to make a wheezing sound. Out of nowhere, almost like a hummingbird flapping its wings, she felt anxiety flaring up inside her.
Hours passed, and her anxiety became a peculiar state of being. Sitting there with nothing to stare at but the wall with chipped paint, she began to drift into an unpleasant daydream, a memory of the last time she’d been on this porch waiting for someone to show.
For her twelfth birthday she had handed out invitations in school, and she had sat in this very swing when her classmates showed up, gift bags in tow. Quinn knew they didn’t come for her friendship’s sake but out of sheer curiosity.
At the birthday party, the kids ran through the house, opening and slamming doors, entering rooms no one had any business going in. “What’s in there?” they’d ask and rip the door open so it hit the wall behind it with a thud.
“A study. You’re not allowed in there,” Quinn said but they entered nevertheless, giggling and intruding, leaving the door wide open. She heard distant, hazy chatter. She couldn’t make out the words, but laughter rang loud and clear and didn’t seem to stop.
Due to the commotion her father had appeared at the top of the stairs. Everybody stared at him, the last button of his dress shirt undone, gaping open, exposing his belly. And they snickered when they saw him, mocked him, his waddle gait, how he used his body weight to swing his leg up, like a pendulum.
After everybody left, cake crumbs and smears of icing were all that remained of the once-triple-layered Victoria sponge cake that had taken her all morning to make. No one had admired the light perfection of the cake itself and the richness of the frosting, none of the kids had said anything, but they had scraped the icing off and made a mess on their plates.
Now this woman, her new mother, was going to live with them. For a split second, she felt the need to run to one of the trees up front and climb up so she could see farther down the road. To everybody’s amazement, despite her size, Quinn was proficient in climbing trees. She was strong and not afraid of falling and even though she scraped her legs and skinned her knees in the process, it was all worth it; to peek into a nest—she would never disturb it; after all, momma bird was taking care of the baby birds—and to be able to catch a glimpse of her familiar surroundings that seemed so different from a higher viewpoint.
Her new mother didn’t appear until nightfall. She wore one of the prettiest green silk dresses Quinn had ever seen—the color of beans dropped in ice water just at the right time to stop them from cooking—and her hair smelled of oranges and bergamot pear and when the light hit it just right, the colors and highlights reminded her of autumn leaves, amber hues melded together like a crown on a princess. And in the middle of her face sat her eyes, deep green and dark as a lake. Quinn couldn’t help but imagine how pretty she’d be if she’d been given half of her new mother’s beauty.
Quinn was adept at hiding her feelings, yet her heart had a life of its own. It picked up a beat or two, stumbled even, causing her to draw in a deep breath. She didn’t know what to say to her and so she just stood watching her father busily wiping his shiny face with a handkerchief. He seemed happy, his eyes were wide in anticipation, and he stood close to the woman, who was so small that three of her would fit into his body. Quinn could tell by just looking at her that she’d never love him. She was too exquisite a woman to love a man like her father.
“Call me Sigrid,” the woman said and she grabbed Quinn’s hand, hanging limp by her side. Her smile was small, then fleeting. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she added but it sounded as if she had just told a lie.
Quinn felt the woman’s eyes wander from her round face down her plump body and back up. The woman’s cheeks had a rosy hue, but the rest of her skin was quite pale, as if the warmth had recoiled the moment she realized Quinn was not what she’d expected.
“Call you Secret?” Quinn asked, stretching the first syllable.
“S-I-G-R-I-D,” the woman replied, spelling out her name.
“Where are you from?” Quinn asked, since she detected an accent.
“Austria,” the woman said.
Quinn didn’t know what to expect of living with a mother or a woman functioning as a motherly figure, because she had never had one. There was a certain kind of pain and longing for her very own mother—a woman she had never met and who wasn’t spoken about unless Quinn brought her up herself—yet the pain was vague at best, elusive, as if Quinn was unable to assign any true meaning to someone she had lost but who had never been there to begin with.
Sigrid turned out to not be very domestic. It took her hours to get ready in the morning, and she never seemed to have time to prepare breakfast or lunch. She drove into town, to the local beauty salon, frequently, however, and always returned in high spirits with arms full of bags and packages. The laundry piled up, and after a few months, it was decided that Mrs. Holmes would return to resume the responsibilities of maintaining the house.
In due time, Sigrid made it a habit to stay in her room. Mrs. Holmes brought her tea on a silver tray with dainty fine china Quinn’s father had ordered from Austria as a gift to Sigrid, and she ate all her meals from the plates with gaudy peacock-looking birds and orange and blue flowers. The set came with cups and saucers, sugar bowl and creamer, a soup tureen, and serving plates, dessert bowls, bread plates, a cake stand, and a gravy boat.
“Where did you get those peacock dishes from?” Quinn asked, fascinated by how every dish had its very own bowl or container.
“It’s not a peacock, child,” Sigrid said as she gently caressed the shiny smooth surface of the dainty plate. “It’s a pheasant bird of paradise. The pattern is called Eden.”
“Eden like Adam and Eve Eden?” Quinn asked, tempted to reach for the plate, wanting to feel its smoothness and weight, since Mrs. Holmes had been instructed to serve Quinn’s food on simple Pyrex plates with a thick red border.
“Adam and Eve? Not so much. More like a perpetual place of bliss, you know, like your father and I.”
Quinn knew it was all a lie—there was no paradise, no Eden, not even close. There was, however, Cadillac Man.
Less than one year after her father had married Sigrid, a man in a midnight blue Cadillac had pulled into the driveway. Quinn had dug her shoes into the porch and halted the swing with a violent screech. The man was tall and wore a gray suit and shoes shinier than a newly minted quarter. He retrieved a suitcase from the trunk, nodded at her on his way to the front door, then knocked. Mrs. Holmes wasn’t expected for another two hours, but Sigrid must have been standing behind the door, because it opened just seconds later.
“Go play, child,” Sigrid called out, and Quinn wondered what kind of games Sigrid thought teenagers played these days. She remained on the front porch for a while, then snuck into the kitchen. She ate the leftover cobbler, wondering what kind of cake and ice cream Mrs. Holmes would serve after dinner. She wasn’t