by Tina Mikals
Chapter 23
The Boring Brown Farmhouse
May's teeth chattered in her head. She was wet to the bone and dripping frigid water as they set out for the farmhouse and the warmth promised by the smoking chimney.
But the house was proving to be farther away than they thought.
"I guess I should have painted the house up closer," May said, unable to feel her face anymore because of the cold.
"Mmm," said Carlisle.
"I didn't exactly criticize your painting."
"I didn't say anything, May."
"Well, the house is pretty far back, I'll give you that. I suppose it could be closer."
"Maybe," he admitted.
"I, for one, wish you had painted it a lot closer," said Sheila. "I can't feel my toes anymore."
They passed by a grotesquely shaped tree, the branches too thick for the trunk. "And I know I got the proportions all wrong," said May.
"It's a common problem," he ventured tentatively, stepping over a twisted branch on the ground. "Usually comes from standing too close to your work. You probably just need to back up from the canvas now and then."
"Why did your mother have to hang this up, anyway?" said May. Sheila had seen the painting stuffed into a corner of May's bedroom one day. Sheila had asked for it and May had yielded it up begrudgingly.
"You know how much she likes you. I told her you'd be mad if she hung it."
May cringed as she pictured it in Bonnie Hazelton's living room for everyone to see. She wasn't mad—she was horrified!
She was also freezing. No one talked after that for some minutes as they trekked over tall silver-brown grass that crunched frostily under their feet. She began to shiver uncontrollably, unable to stop herself. The house had to be another quarter of a mile at least only she wasn't sure she could walk much farther.
"I need to sit down," she said.
"Oh no you don't," said Carlisle, sounding alarmed. "You need to keep moving."
"Just for a second." She sat down anyway, bunched herself into a ball, and rocked back and forth. It helped a little, but her whole body was still shaking violently.
Carlisle had already given his coat to Sheila. He unbuttoned his wool vest and put it around May's shoulders. It wasn't dry, but it was warm. He left both his hands on her shoulders, crouched down in front of her and held her gaze. His lips were blue and there was frost forming on his dark eyebrows. "Come on, May, get up."
"I just need to sit down for a bit."
"You can't. You need to keep moving."
Sheila was slouched over with her arms folded over her chest. "May, please, get up," she said, shifting her weight and stomping a foot.
"If we stop here, we'll die."
"I just need to warm up for a minute."
"No. Get up now, or I'll carry you."
She studied the dead serious expression on his face. You would, too, wouldn't you? she thought. She summoned whatever energy she had left and got on her knees. As he helped her to her feet, she managed to get out the word, "Nag."
As though he had charged her with a little bit of his energy, in some kind of half trance, barely feeling her body and her legs trudging under her, she managed the seemingly endless rest of the way.
She didn't remember painting a fence, but there it was anyway: an ugly, rickety one about five feet tall surrounding the homely brown farmhouse. At least half of the fence slats were broken or missing.
Carlisle undid the locked clasp on the opposite side of the gate and opened it. There was no walkway to the house, so they trod over the unmowed grass in the yard, flattening it down with their footsteps and leaving a wormlike trail behind them.
There was no front porch, only a few bare concrete steps leading up to a beige door. Above their heads, suspended from a wooden overhang, a set of wind chimes clunked out an unpleasant tune.
Carlisle tried the door. "Figured as much. Locked and probably bolted. Get down off the steps. I'm going to have to kick it open."
As he backed away from the door and swung his foot, something sharp clawed at the pit of May's stomach. "Wait," she shrieked out, rushing up the stairs.
Carlisle almost fell off the stoop. "What is it?" he squawked, catching himself with a hand on the doorjamb.
"Just—I don't know—I think there's a key somewhere."
"Well, be quick about it. It's not getting any warmer."
There was no welcome mat for a key to hide under. She passed her fingers over the top of the doorframe and felt around. There was no key there.
Over her head, she heard the doleful sound of the wind chimes—ding, ding; ding, ding; clunk. She, Sheila and Carlisle all looked up at the same time.
In the middle of the hanging tubes of the chimes was a small silver key. It swung back and forth on a red thread. Carlisle reached up and snapped the thin string that held it. The chimes sang out musically as he took his hand away. "I guess they were just off-key," he said, with a little smile as he handed the key to her.
"That's a lame joke," said May, turning the key over in her hand and looking at it. It was ornamentally carved with flowering trees all the way around and down the shaft. It looked older than the handle and lock, the door and the farmhouse put together.
Sliding the key into the lock, she opened the door. Inside was a windowless, white-walled room with a small fireplace at one end, which she and Sheila rushed over to as soon as they saw it.
When Carlisle entered, he cast his eyes up at the ceiling which was no more than an inch above his head.
"The fireplace is so small," lamented Sheila, rubbing her hands together in front of it.
Carlisle crossed the room and joined them. "What a stingy fire," he said in a disapproving tone.
"It's okay if you're right next to it," said May feeling inexplicably insulted.
"Part of the problem is this blasted fireplace screen," he said. "I really hate these contraptions." Crouching down, he touched the metal framework of the screen quickly, then took hold of the frame with both hands. "I got rid of them all at my place," he said, tugging and pulling, and then yanking on the metal framework when he found that it was bolted in place. "The screens keep the sparks from flying out but they also keep all the heat in."
With one final pull, he wrenched the screen free of the stonework and toppled over backward with it in his hands. When he got on his feet, he crossed the room and chucked the screen out the door.
"What'd you do that for?" said May.
"It's freezing in here!" he said as though it were all her fault.
"It's a lot better now," said Sheila.
"I thought as much," he said, walking back to them and reaching into a bucket of firewood near the hearth. He threw a large log into the fire and a brief, flickering burst of sparks shot up the flue. He was about to add a few more logs, when May stopped him.
"Shouldn't we save some of the firewood for later?"
Carlisle scrunched up his face at her. "Save it for what? Until we freeze to death? Really May! You call that a fire?"
He added several more logs until the heat came at them in waves and made the steam rise in an eerie fashion off the wet clothes still on their bodies.
Standing up, Carlisle noticed some photos on the mantelshelf. "What are these? Daguerreotypes?"
"Photographs," said Sheila, standing up and joining him. "Look May, it's your family."
"They're in color. Are they tinted?" asked Carlisle, picking up a framed photo.
"No. They just come out that way," responded Sheila.
"How does it work? How do they do it?" He turned the frame over as if the back of it might yield some clue to the process.
"Don't look at me," replied Sheila, shrugging. "Do you know, May?"
"No," said May, embarrassed that she didn't.
Carlisle looked at the subject of the photo in his hand. "And who is this good-looking blond fellow? Is this a beau, May?" he asked, turning the picture around for her to see and raising a theatrical eyebrow as though he th
oroughly disapproved.
"Oh, that's her brother, Charley," interjected Sheila. She pointed to a family picture taken on the front lawn of the Taylor house. "Those are her parents and there's Charley there."
"You have a fine looking family, May. You look a lot like your mother, but I suppose everyone tells you that."
"Pretty much."
"Charley doesn't appear to be too much older than you."
"They got married late. Mom had to spit us out quick," said May.
Sheila said, "Charley's wicked smart—the whole family is. May's mother is a financial wiz and her father's a lawyer."
"A lawyer?" said Carlisle, impressed.
"Tax lawyer," May said, faking a yawn.
"Believe me, even if Charley wasn't her brother, it's not like she'd be interested in anyone like that anyway," said Sheila.
"Like what?"
"I don't know, like nice, for instance?" said Sheila.
May snorted a laugh. "Charley's nice, alright. I always tell him he'll make someone a nice wife someday."
Sheila scowled. She leaned towards Carlisle conspiratorially and said, "She always goes for the guys that barely notice she's alive. And if a guy's nice at all, forget it, she doesn't want anything to do with him. Far as I can tell, all she's interested in is jerks. Of course that's only when she can even be bothered to take her nose out of a book that is."
"Sheila!"
"I see," said Carlisle, playing along. "Well, not only is her brother smart and decent, he seems to have gotten his father's good looks as well. Don't you think?" He tilted the picture toward Sheila, and she blushed.
Carlisle put back the picture and spotted another on the mantelshelf. It was a photo of May and Sheila sitting together on the yellow flowered couch in Sheila's living room. Some of the wall behind them was visible.
"That one was taken this summer," said Sheila. "My mother hung May's painting in the corner, so I guess we must be traveling along that back wall now, but the pictures have changed since then."
May took her eyes away from the photo of her family and glanced around the squat, white room. There was only one other door in the room besides the one by which they entered. It was next to a narrow stairway that appeared to lead to a second level.
"We ought to try to find some dry clothes," she said, staring at the door, not quite ready to leave the fire.
Carlisle followed her gaze and took her hint. He walked across the room and wiggled the doorknob. Retrieving the ornate key from his pocket, he put it in the keyhole. It fit. He turned the key then went through the door.
Curious, both Sheila and May left the fire and followed in after him. Sheila bumped into him already trying to exit. He backed up in order to not run over her.
"It's your bedroom, May," said Sheila, halfway into the room. "Only—smaller?"
May lingered in the doorway. She didn't relish the possibility of her bedroom being scrutinized.
How could this room be her bedroom anyway? Her bedroom was somewhere else—someplace real. It was at home. Not in a painting! Sure this room was similar, but the dimensions were all wrong. All the furniture: her bed, her desk, her books: they were all normal size, but the room itself was just so much smaller. Everything was jumbled one thing against another. There was hardly any space to move. Heck, there seemed hardly any room to breathe. And like the rest of the place, the ceiling was so low that Carlisle's hair actually brushed against it.
Yet there was her dresser by the door; her bed with her grandmother's butterfly quilt still on it; and next to that, her white book shelf crammed with miscellaneous junk: a broken spelling bee trophy from third grade; an abacus she had taught herself to add small amounts on (she had no idea how to subtract); and a model of a t-rex she had made out of papier-mache for the science fair in fourth grade. On top of the bookshelf was a pile of stacked CD cases with the player on the shelf directly below it.
Standing amidst all this was Carlisle, who looked about as uncomfortable as any thirty-six year old man could look in a teenage girl's bedroom, let alone a tall Victorian man trapped in the far end of an incredibly small one by two teenage girls.
Just behind him was May's desk. It was still neatly piled with school books, homework and her laptop. Her room in actuality being on the second floor and under an eave, one side of the ceiling was pitched. Against the wall on the pitched side was her denim beanbag chair and dozens on dozens of stuffed animals in a row along the floor.
"Could I possibly get out?" said Carlisle, pointing to the door and motioning for the girls to back out of the room.
The sight of her desk reminded May that she had a test in social studies that she hadn't studied for whatsoever. For a moment she forgot her embarrassment and the improbability of finding her bedroom in a painting. She smacked her forehead with her palm. "Oh crap! I have a test on Friday."
Carlisle gave a frustrated sigh and glanced around the room. "What's this?" he said, taking an open shoebox off her bookshelf. The box was spilling over with tubes of oil paint, a bottle of thinner, and crusted paintbrushes. "Please tell me this isn't how you keep your paints."
With her hand still on her forehead, she peered out from between her fingers. "Why do you ask?"
"But this is awful," he said, holding up a full tube of red ochre paint that had no cap. He looked around for a trash can and spotted one just behind him. He dropped the hardened tube of dried paint into the can, and it made a loud pinging noise as it hit the metal sides of the bucket.
"Don't you ever accidentally leave the caps off?" she asked.
"I make my own. But if I didn't, I certainly wouldn't leave them like this. How can you even find what you need?" He poked around the box with his index finger then tossed the box back on the shelf, rattling the knickknacks and jostling the pile of CD cases which cascaded down in a clattering plastic waterfall at him. He made an attempt to catch them, but they flowed around his fingers and hands until every one of them had landed in a heap at his feet.
"How stupid can I possibly be!" he said, staring down at the pile.
Sheila squatted down to pick them up.
"Don't trouble yourself, Sheila. It's my fault; I'll pick them up," he said, bending down.
"It was just an accident, Mr. Carlisle. It could happen to anyone," said Sheila.
"Those things fall all the time. I should really get a holder for them. I pick them up three, four times a week myself. It's really nothing to beat yourself up over."
Carlisle picked up the last CD case and stood with it, hitting his head loudly on the low slanted ceiling.
May and Sheila winced.
With one hand on his head, Carlisle put the case back on the shelf then motioned to the door. "Could—could you girls back up and let me out? This room is very—very—"
"Claustrophobic?" helped May.
"Small."
She backed out of the room as Sheila sat on the bed and drew up her legs to let him pass.
Looking relieved, he exited the room. Drawing his sword from the scabbard, he turned up the stairway. "I'm going to go see what's upstairs," he said to May.
She went into the bedroom again and shivered. It suddenly occurred to her that she was standing next to her own bureau, and she began opening one drawer after another in the hope of finding dry clothes. She pulled out a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt and a dark gray Red Sox sweatshirt and handed them to Sheila.
"Wait a second," she said, taking back the pair of jeans which she realized would never fit Sheila, and swapping them for a pair of leggings. She regretted it instantly.
Sheila sent her a hurt look. "Why don't you get dressed first? Being as you're so skinny and all, you're probably colder than me. I'll wait. Hopefully, the pants will fit."
"Now you know I didn't mean—"
Sheila squeezed by roughly, bumping her into the bureau with her hip, then left, closing the door loudly.
May took off her damp clothes and searched around for a location to put them. At home she wou
ld have placed them neatly in the laundry room hamper, and it seemed unnatural to just throw them anywhere, even if this really wasn't her actual bedroom.
She finally settled on the corner by her desk and thought how her mother would have turned purple to see those wet clothes on the floor. She got dressed in a t-shirt, a green sweatshirt and a pair of dry jeans. Before she left, she went back to the sopping pile in the corner and felt around her jeans until she located the newspaper clipping. It was wet now and faded, but she slid it into the back pocket of the jeans she had on.
Sheila was attempting to dry her long hair at the fire when May emerged from the tiny bedroom.
"I didn't mean what you think," said May. "The ones I gave you are just newer, is all." And yes, she did think they would fit better, but she couldn't say that. "Do you have to be so sensitive?"
For an answer, Sheila brushed by her, went into the bedroom and slammed the door after her.
She wasn't worried. Sheila would cool off quickly, she always did. May headed upstairs to see what Carlisle had found. He had been quiet up there for some time.
She met him midway up the narrow stairwell as he was coming back down.
"There's not much up there really," he said to her with his head pressed against the inclined ceiling above him.
"I'd still like to see anyway," she said. He took up the whole of the tiny stairwell. There was just no way to get by him. "Do you mind?"
Turning around, Carlisle ducked his head and went back up the stairs.
