Sweet Sixteen, Chapter 12 ~ the Book

When Elly got home she did not find a peaceful scene.  She’d ridden home pensively on the bus, wondering if she should talk to her parents about what Sien had said.  But her decision was made for her when she walked in the door and heard angry voices from upstairs.

She climbed the stairs and found Eric leaning against the wall in the hallway outside Marc’s bedroom.  “What’s going on?” she asked quietly.

“They found out Marc’s klepto.”

“What?”

He shrugged.  Elly peeked around the corner and saw her younger brother seated on the edge of his bed, looking miserable surrounded by a lot of junk, none of which seemed to have a common denominator.  Their parents were standing above him, and Russ was talking — ranting — while Liseli just stood there with her arms crossed and a stony expression on her face.

“What happened?” she whispered to Eric.

Eric motioned her to take a few steps away from the door, and answered, “They caught him shoplifting at the mall.  Cops searched his locker at school and found all sorts of shit with price tags on it.  His bedroom too.  Dad’s about to pop a gasket.”

Elly sighed.  “What’s going to happen?” she asked.  “I mean, are the police—”

“They arrested him at the mall — Dad had to bail him out.”  Eric nodded at this juicy tidbit.  “He’s not gonna have to go back or anything, but I guess Mom and Dad are gonna make him go around returning all that shit to the places he stole it from.”

“Do you think we should have told them?”

Marc’s sticky fingers had been common knowledge to his siblings for a very long time, but it was not something they talked about to each other, or to their parents.  It was something of a code of conduct among the Markson children — an unspoken rule that you didn’t dig into each other’s business or rat on each other to Mom or Dad.  Like when you saw your sister hopping on the back of a motorcycle with some guy . . . .

“Hell, no,” Eric answered her question with a firm shake of his head.  “Marc would have killed me.”

“But he ended up arrested.”

Eric shrugged.  “You could’ve told if you thought it was right.”

“I know.”

They listened for a moment.  “I don’t understand you,” Russ was saying, “We have money.  I give you an allowance, you can afford all this stuff, this is two-bit junk.  Why the hell do you need to steal this stuff?”

“I dunno,” mumbled Marc.

“You dunno.  You dunno.  That’s all you can fucking say for yourself, isn’t it?”

“Russ,” Liseli objected.

“I’m done,” he said, disgusted, and that was Eric and Elly’s cue to split.  Only, Eric was the only one who did, making a quick dash for his room.  When Russ walked out into the hallway he didn’t see anyone, but Elly was standing there all the same.

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Liseli sat down on the bed beside Marc, after brushing aside a pair of boxing gloves.  She didn’t know how you shoplifted boxing gloves, and she didn’t want to ask.  He hunched his shoulders and stared fixedly at the floor.

She sighed, and said quietly, “He’s only upset with you because you got caught, you know.”

He glanced at her in surprise.

“Well it’s more than that.  You stole things you didn’t need, you stashed them where they could be found, you got caught.  It’s not because you stole, it’s how you went about it.”

She paused to let that sink in, then said, “I’m telling you that, because I want you to know that I feel differently.”  She kept her voice low, almost soothing.  “I don’t want you stealing.  Ever.  For any reason.  I don’t want you to be good at it.”

He was about to speak, but she held up a hand.  “I know why you do it.  I’m sorry I never realized it before, but trust me, I understand.  Maybe a little better than you do.  Your father does, too, even if he doesn’t want to.  But us understanding doesn’t make it right, or okay.  Now, I’m not going to yell at you or tell you how stupid you were, I think you father did all of that that needs to be done.  I just want you to know it disappoints me that you think you have to do this.”

She stood up.  “Sort it all out by which stores things belong to, and we’ll take it from there.”

She left his room, closing the door behind her, and went downstairs to find Russ standing outside by the pool, his hands in his pockets as he watched the light fading over the trees and rooftops.

“You’re gonna say I was too hard on him.”

She shrugged, stepping up beside him.  “Well, yes.  Though I did get to be the good cop for a change, which was new and exciting.”

He glanced down at her and she smiled.

“This is not good,” he groaned, shaking his head.  “This is just . . . not good.”

“That kleptomania is hereditary, contrary to popular belief?”

“It’s not — what?”

“What what?”

“Liseli, he didn’t inherit it from me.”

She snorted.  “Oh, and it’s just pure coincidence that you and your son both love to steal.”

“I don’t ‘love’ to steal.”

“And of course you don’t understand at all why he’d steal things that we can afford . . . .”

“I only stole things to make money so we could live,” Russ objected.  “So that we could feed and house and clothe the kids.  I haven’t stolen anything since Ixion’s been successful enough to do that.  And I’ve never stolen anything from this world, anyway.”

“So you are of course morally superior to Marcus in all ways, because you never enjoyed it, even a little.”

“I didn’t say that.  But I am smarter.”  He took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms.  “You don’t risk getting caught stealing stuff that you don’t need, that’s just stupid.  And rule number big fat one is you don’t shit in your own backyard.”

“Ooh, I’m impressed, you’re smarter than your 15-year-old son.”

“What is this?”  He glared at her.

“Russell, he’s your son.  He’s stupid, he’s reckless, he’s got sticky fingers.  Shouldn’t you be dealing with the root of the problem instead of blaming it all on him?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.  He’s your son.  He takes after you, in more ways than one.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t know, Russ, why are you asking me?  Isn’t this your department?  All I’m saying is that Marc is a good boy — so maybe instead of yelling at him like he’s some run of the mill punk you could put that pea-sized Key brain of yours to work to come up with a different way of dealing with him.”

Liseli turned on her heel and headed back inside, letting the sliding glass doors closing shut be the last word on the matter.

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Elly watched her mother go inside, then turned her gaze back on Russ.  His back was to her, so she couldn’t see what effect Liseli’s parting shot had on him, though the silence spoke words enough.  It’s funny, she thought, realizing that she didn’t even much care.

It had been a long time since she last spied on her parents.  When she was little and often sat in on their conversations, her chief desire had been to see them get along and not argue.  She had struggled to understand what lay behind the vague hints that almost always peppered their conversations, but only because she knew it held some secret to why they were the way they were.  It had never occurred to her before that those hints might hold secrets about her.

“Dad,” she said, and he turned around.

“Elly Ann, I didn’t hear you get home . . . .”

“Yeah, well, I heard the big brou-ha-ha about Marc.”  She shrugged, walking towards him.  “So is he grounded for, like, ever now?”

“We haven’t decided.”  He didn’t seem to want to talk about it very much, and abruptly changed the subject; “So what were you up to?”

Elly smiled, not fooled by the innocent tone he tried the question with.  “Well, you know, jewel heist.  Witness the black turtle-neck—” she motioned to her shirt.

“Right.”  He returned the smile, but only briefly.

“Actually I was just hanging out with Sien.  You remember Sien?  From last week?”

“Yeah, I remember Sien.”  No trace of a smile this time.  “You really like that guy?”

“Sure,” Elly responded with a guarded little smile and shrug.  “I can tell you don’t.”

“Not really.”

“Ooooh well.”  She shrugged again, tilting her head to the side.  “He’s really different than all the other boys.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Maybe when you get to know him better . . . .”

“Maybe.”  His tone said definitely not.

“Well, anyway, don’t be too hard on Marc, okay?  He’s not the smartest key on the chain, is all.”

“What?”

“What?” she echoed innocently.

“Nothing.”  He eyed her suspiciously, but let whatever he was thinking go unsaid.  It was the Markson way.

---

Later that night found Elly rummaging through some boxes stacked way in the back of the storage room nearest to Hollie’s bedroom.  It was far enough away from her parents’ bedroom that she wasn’t too worried about waking them, and she didn’t much care about Hollie coming in to see what she was doing.

She found what she was looking for in a box marked ‘Xmas lights’ on the top shelf in the back.  Her mother’s attempt at hiding the book inside a mislabeled cardboard box would seem pathetic if it hadn’t worked.  As far as Elly knew, her father had never looked for it in there.

She still remembered that spring, when just before her seventh birthday Russ disappeared for nearly a week and returned without ever saying where he’d gone.  Liseli knew, alright, but Elly and her brothers were kept in the dark.  So was everyone else, for all she knew, even the other members of Ixion who’d been none too happy about his absence for their first real gig at a local bar.

The only real clues Elly had ever been able to find was the strange beaded necklace her father had given her for her birthday after his return, and the book she’d seen her mother hiding in the mismarked box.  Only, she had not been able to read very well back then, and so the book told her little.  It was very old, and filled with lots of handwritten notes and a few sketches.  At seven, the sketches were what had interested her the most.  They’d been of different sceneries; natures and cityscapes.  There were some drawings of people and animals.  Elly hadn’t known what about it had merited her mother hiding it, and had tucked it back away into the box.  By the time she was able to read, she’d forgotten about it.  Like the nesting dolls.

Sometimes it seemed growing older was all about losing curiosity and concern, becoming more interested in what your friends were doing than what your family had done.

Sien had reawakened memories of that time, when everything was a great mystery and her parents’ lives were the most interesting thing to her.

The Lost One had returned because of him, she was sure of it.  She feared now what she’d find in the writings of that old book.  She wondered why it had survived the move from their old ranch house on Vine St. to the big colonial on DeVine.

If Liseli didn’t want Russ or anyone looking at the book, why not just dispose of it?  Why not even keep it under lock and key?  Did she feel guilty about hiding it?  About denying her husband and children the right to look at it?

Elly sat cross legged amid the boxes she’d pulled down onto the floor and cradled the book in her lap.  It had a leather cover with no markings, and she opened it carefully, fearing that such an old book was better opened with gloves in a sterile library vault then here amid the dust.

She read for hours.  The night wore on and she didn’t notice.  The handwriting was small and close, hard to read, hard to see in the dim closet lighting, but she couldn’t stop.  When she finally emerged from the otherworlds, she blinked as if waking from a dream and not knowing what it meant.  But she realized that she had to go to school, and meet Sien, so she had to sleep.  How could she sleep?

She tucked the box back into its hidden corner and piled the others back up in front of it.  But the book she kept.  She took it back to her room and put it on a shelf in her closet, covering it with a blanket.  Maybe in the morning it would only be a dream.

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The rest of the chapter can be found here: An excerpt from the book . . .