Page 106 of Things We Do in the Dark
“What happened when you and your mother went back to Charles Baxter’s house?” Duffy asked.
“Charles showed me around,” Joey said, her voice echoing through the speakers above her. “He said it was nice to have a little girl in the house again. His daughter was away at school, and she rarely came home anymore. And then we all went down to the basement.”
Joey hadn’t realized that houses could have basements like this, with furniture and carpet and different rooms. It was a kids’ paradise.
The Baxters had a billiards table, a Ping-Pong table, two pinball machines, and an originalGalagaarcade cabinet, a game that Joey had only ever played at the supermarket when her mother remembered to go grocery shopping. Charles seemed genuinely delighted to see her, and he explained that she didn’t need quarters to play any of the games.
“All you have to do is press this red button, and the game will start,” he said. “And you can play as many times as you want. Let’s see if you can beat my scores.”
On theGalagascreen, Joey could see the names of the other players. Someone named Brian had the top score; that must be Charles’s son. The second highest belonged to Lexi, who must be Charles’s daughter. What a nice name,Lexi. Upstairs on the fireplace mantel, Joey had seen a portrait of the whole family, which looked like it was taken by a professional photographer. The Baxters seemed like a completely normal family, except that Charles had a mistress named Ruby.
The video games kept Joey occupied for a while, as didFather of the Bride, the movie she selected from the extensive VHS collection. She was tired when the movie finally ended, so she wandered upstairs to see where she was supposed to sleep.
There was laughter coming from the second floor, and she found her mom and Charles propped up in his bed, feeding each other fruit and cheese, with some black-and-white movie playing on the TV. The master bedroom was almost as large as their apartment, with double doors and huge closets and an enormous bathroom. Charles was cutting the cheese into cubes with a long, thin knife, and feeding them to Ruby like it was a barbecue skewer.
“Hey, baby,” her mother said. Her face was flushed, her hair mussed. Her dress was hiked up, her long legs bare and exposed. Charles’s free hand was caressing her thigh. “Going to bed?”
“I’m not sure where I should sleep.”
Charles popped a piece of cheese into his mouth and grinned. “At the very end of the hall is a guest bedroom, the one with the white bedspread. You’ll find toothpaste and toothbrushes in the bathroom, along with soap and shampoo and all that good stuff.”
“I, um, don’t have any pajamas.”
“I’ll lend you one of my T-shirts.” Charles pointed to the dresser, which was beside the entrance to the bathroom. “Second drawer from the top. Choose anything you want. You’re so small, it’ll be a nightgown for you.” He laughed, and Ruby laughed too as she played with his hair.
Joey headed for the dresser and pulled open the second drawer to find a row of neatly folded shirts. She took the first one she saw, which turned out to be a T-shirt from the University of Toronto.
“That’s my alma mater,” Charles said. “Be careful with it, okay? I’vehad that shirt longer than your mother’s been alive, and it’s not in nearly as good shape as she is.”
Ruby laughed again. “You’re so silly, my darling.”
Joey said good night to both of them and trudged down the hallway. She passed a bedroom filled with sports paraphernalia—signed basketballs, footballs, hockey sticks, two framed jerseys. Brian’s room.
She kept going, then stopped at a bedroom where the walls were painted pink. It had to be Lexi’s room. Curious, she stepped inside, and instantly, she was awestruck. There were posters on the walls of Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, and Brian Austin Green; Charles’s daughter was clearly a90210fan. There were also posters of Madonna, Mariah Carey, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Her mother had once mentioned that Lexi was a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and that she almost never came home to visit.
“She doesn’t get along with her father,” Ruby told her. “That’s what happens when you spoil kids rotten.”
Being spoiled didn’t sound so bad to Joey. Lexi Baxter had more stuff than Joey could have ever imagined one girl having. There was a stereo, a CD collection, a small TV. She had an entire wall of bookshelves that didn’t contain a single book, and were instead filled with trophies, plaques, ribbons, and medals. 1990 Skate Canada International, second place. 1986 Autumn Classic International, third place. 1987 US International Figure Skating Classic, seventh place. Lexi Baxter had been a competitive figure skater, and if these trophies were any indication, a pretty good one.
Joey trailed her fingers along the bed as she headed toward Lexi’s closet, which was so big it needed its own lighting. Picking through the clothes, she saw that everything was brand name. Benetton. Polo. Tommy Hilfiger. Ralph Lauren. Clean-cut preppy designer clothing, for the girl who had everything.
And on display, right in the middle, hung Lexi’s ice skates. Charles’s daughter owned three pairs, two white and one beige, in various states of wear. Joey picked up one of the white ones and slid off the skate guard. The blade was extremely thin at the edge, sharpened almost to a V. Joey recalled what one of the commentators had said during the Albertville Winter Olympics, when the women’s free skate event was on.
The better a skater you were, the sharper the blade would be.
She put the skate back as she found it and went to check out the photos. All around the room—on the pin board, on the headboard, taped to the dresser mirror—were pictures of Lexi, blond and trim, at all different stages of her life. Half the photos showed her skating, and the other half showed her with family and friends. Lexi was popular. And she was close to her mom and brother, it seemed. There were lots of pictures of the three of them, smiling, laughing, doing things together. She looked like her mother, but she had her father’s eyes.
What would it be like to be Lexi Baxter? Lexi had a mother who loved her, and a father who provided for her. She had a brother to play with or fight with, depending on the day. She had friends. Skating. University. No worries about money. Lexi had been born into a dream life. She had won the family lottery.
It was so unfair.
Joey left Lexi’s room and made her way down the hall to the guest bedroom, which was beautifully decorated and completely impersonal. She found a toothbrush in the ensuite bathroom like Charles said she would—even the Baxters’ guests had a better life than she and Ruby did. She could understand why her mother would want to live here and be Charles’s wife. Under any other circumstances, Joey might have wanted to be Charles’s stepdaughter.
Except there was already one monster in the family.
She left Charles’s T-shirt in the bathroom, climbed into bed, and, still wearing all her own clothes, fell asleep.
The courtroom was so quiet that Joey could hear the rumbling of the bailiff’s stomach from six feet away.
