Gretchen

by Shannon Kirk

  Mom takes the driveway to the ranch, and we enter a mini compound of sorts.

  “Hmm,” she says. “Pretty close to the pictures, yeah?”

  We park between the ranch and the low, long shed. Out ahead of us is a patch of cattails and tall, swamplike lime grasses, as if dancing green snakes are climbing rods to eat brown Twinkies speared on the tops. I can’t see beyond the patch of cattails and lime snakes because the patch is thick, and I sense the land drops behind the patch. I think a pond or maybe a creek is directly below. In the far, far, lower distance, beyond the patch, is a grassy field surrounded by beautiful oaks and maples and birch and not gangly, messy pines, like behind us now and surrounding the giant brick house at the top of the hill. So to sum up, in front of us, out beyond the cattails and lime snake patch, is an inviting lightness, a dancing light and rippling leaves, the promise of a burdenless summer. A place for running. A place for picnics. But everywhere else is dark and still. It’s like this whole hill and the area around is three-quarters a foreboding Hansel and Gretel forest with a quarter wedge of happy Magic Faraway Tree countryside.

  I turn to the blue-painted door on the ranch to my right, and a man steps out. He’s lightly rubbing and rolling his fingers in his palms, one hand and then the other, as if they are the most precious ten items on the planet. He wears pleated dad khakis, loafers, a dad polo, and square dad glasses, and he looks really, really boring. He squints at us as if he’s confused, so this means Mom didn’t call ahead.

  She does this sometimes. Engineers a surprise appearance so it’s harder for landlords to deny us a rental in person.

  Mom steps out of our Volvo, and as I watch her do this, I look closer at the long, low shed opposite the ranch. The shell is made of gray metal, or a mismatch of metal and wood, I think. There are four roller doors on the front, in two pairs. The blue of the roller doors matches the ranch’s front door, but it is weatherworn and chipped. On each of the roller panels is an orange sign with black block letters: KEEP OUT. Chains with padlocks loop through and around the roller door handles. I step out to join Mom at the hood of our Volvo.

  “Hi, I’m Susan. My daughter and I saw your ad for the rental here. Is she still available? Or, oops, are you the new renter?”

  “Ad?” the dad khaki man says. He takes care to hold one hand in a hammock he forms with the other. His tone is kind, his eyes still scrunched and confused.

  “Yes, an ad for this ranch. It was placed on a community website, actually, and a bit buried. But I think it was posted just days ago? So I thought the place might still be available?”

  “Hmm,” he says, sucking in his lips and inspecting his own shoes, which are penny loafers, covered in a dusty dirt.

  I look to Mom, and she looks to me, and we share confusion between us.

  “I placed the ad,” comes a high, shouting girl voice from the side of the low, gray shed. And indeed, a girl in an ivory cotton sundress with a repeated apple print appears; she looks about my age. She’s shorter than I am, thinner and somewhat frailer than I am, strawberry blonde with blotches of birthmarks, and it seems her fair skin has patches of red that brighten and soften, like the pulsing colors on an octopus.

  “Dad, it’s time. We need to rent again. I placed the ad,” she says, now standing only feet from us. The blotches of red on her white skin truly do pulsate up close, and I can’t tell if this is from heat, temperature change, some condition, or emotion. I can’t tell if this moving skin of hers is natural or healthy or what. She’s sweating around her skinny neck and perspiring at the hairline, as if she ran down the hill from the big brick house to intercept us here, maybe, I’m guessing. So maybe her blotches of red are from exertion.

  “Hi,” she says in a burst toward me and Mom. I shudder from the sudden slap of her presence in our presence. Out of nowhere, this loud voice ripped the awkward scene, made itself known, and is directing this rental. And she must be my age. Just my age.

  “Hi,” she says again, giving a little wave to Mom. “I’m Gretchen,” she says, extending her hand to Mom to shake, and then the same to me. I shake back. From the side of my sight, I can tell Mom’s shaking hand falls limp and trembling, and she clutches it tight with her left. Something about this girl has frightened her. I’m not sure what.

  Before we can say our own names to pulsing Gretchen, the father says, “Honey, I don’t know about this.” And turning to Mom, he says, “Excuse me. Pardon me, ma’am, I’m sorry. Let me have a word with my daughter.”

  Mom nods with eyes wide. She walks backward as if the world ahead holds an advancing category-five tornado—the moment of awe when you’re stalled between fight or flight.

  I follow Mom to the trunk of the Volvo.

  “Lucy, this is all wrong. And her name is Gretchen. We need to leave.”

  “What? Because her name is Gretchen? No, Mom. Maybe because the dad dude doesn’t want to rent to us, that would be a reason.”

  “Her name is Gretchen. It’s a sign.” The crackle of emotion has moved from my voice to Mom’s, and now I’m obligated to be strong.

  This is new. This level of paranoia from her is scary. Typically her paranoia is tied to actual humans who indicate in some objective way they might recognize us.

  “Mom, it’s just a name. What is it about Gretchen?”

  I have never, ever heard any concern about the name Gretchen, and I have no clue what this is about. But she’s shaking, so I’m not allowed to shake too. How would we fare in the world without one serving as a crutch for the other?

  Over by the cattail patch, the dad and Gretchen are whispering and pointing at us and the rental. I’m trying to fix on what they’re debating, but I’m way too thrown by Mom’s weird paranoia, and also, a warm summer wind rustles through the lighter leaves in the forest in the far distance, and also behind us between the stalwart pines, making it sound like we’re in the middle of a creek bed, water dancing over rocks and thus washing out words. I love this sound, one of my favorite sounds in the world.

  I need Mom to snap out of being weird, because now I want to stay. I want to live here. I want to keep the window in my bedroom open so I can fall asleep to this sound. I love the picnic field in the out beyond. I could paint in the open. I could read by the willows. And if the inside of the ranch matches the pictures, I just have to live in those colors.

  “Seriously, Mom. I want to stay. What are you talking about?”

  Mom clenches her mouth, trying to hold inside whatever triggered her, and seems determined on this point about the name Gretchen. When she catches my eyes, she winces. And I know for sure, she did wince. This wincing of hers is not in my mind. What is wrong with me?

  “Mom, what is going on? You can’t seriously be afraid of a name.”

  She exhales, clicks her tongue, and looks away, as if realizing she’s let something slip by her reaction. “Dammit. Never mind. We’ll talk later. I’m not being crazy. There is a reason I’m frightened on hearing the name Gretchen. Don’t worry. I have a good reason. It just startled me. You’re right, Lucy. If he’ll rent to us and agree to our terms, then we can stay. Assuming the inside is like the pictures and not a dump. We’ll talk later.”

  “Okay. Are you okay, Mom?”

  “You don’t hear the name Gretchen often. I’m fine. We’ll talk later. And you’re right, you’re right.” She shakes her head at herself, standing straighter. “I’m being stupid. This is a great place. So far. Let’s see what we can do. Gretchen’s a rare name, right?”

  I think and can’t picture any girls named Gretchen in any of the schools I’ve gone to.

  Gretchen and her father are walking toward the Volvo, so we meet them by the hood. I note, because I’m watching this time, the dad walks with a limp. He’s still rolling his precious fingers in his hands in the lightest, most caressing way. I notice both father and daughter wear matching Apple Watches.

  “Sorry,” the dad says to Mom. He’s a little older than Mom, must be in his midforties. “I’m Jerry,
by the way. Jerry Sabin. Please forgive me for not shaking your hands,” he says, looking at me and Mom, one by one in the eyes. “I know it’s incredibly rude of me. It’s, well, I’m a concert pianist with the Boston Symphony, and I’m recovering from a broken index finger. Nearly finished my career. So I’m a little—”

  Mom cuts him off with a wave. “No explanations, Jerry. Understood.”

  “Anyway,” he says. “So, thank you. Anyway. Anyway. Um, my daughter, Gretchen, here can be a little impulsive, or perhaps I should say headstrong.” He pauses to give her a disciplinary kind of smile. “And she takes matters into her own hands when they should be left to the adult. Me.” He smiles at my mother. “Teens,” he says in an adult mocking tone about kids. Mom smiles back, mirroring his invitation to categorize all teens as impulsive and headstrong and in need of discipline. And she does this not because that’s true of me—what a farce—but because she has to cement a connection with this Jerry guy so he’ll rent to us. I get it.

  I roll my eyes like a teenager would, and I note Gretchen doing the same. I think I nailed it. We both shoot each of our parents that look, and now Gretchen and I have a tiny bond too.

  “Oh boy, do I know what you mean. Lucy here could run the world, according to her,” Mom says, giving me a fake mom scowl. But then she gets serious. “In all seriousness, though, Lucy’s a good girl. You wouldn’t have any trouble from us.”

  “So here’s the deal,” Jerry says. “We had this renter for, oh, about ten years, and one day, about two months ago, he vanishes.” I like the way Jerry looks to both me and Mom and straight in the eyes, talking to us on the same level and in an even, honest tone. I can tell he wants us to trust him. “He, again, no other word for it, vanished. After ten years of being our renter.”

  “Poof,” Gretchen adds, blowing out her hands with the word.

  “Yes, poof. Just gone. No note, no call, nothing. And I might have thought he left for some long trip somewhere—he was a loner—but the rent checks stopped coming, and when we finally went inside two months ago, all of his stuff was gone. Every last thing. Empty. He must have packed up one night and drove off. The pictures you saw, that was Gretchen. She’s been staging the place and taking photos while I’m away at rehearsal in Boston. We’d agreed to talk before any ads went live. I wanted to wait for him a few more months. I had no clue until just now she made the ad live. Anyway, Gretchen here took matters into her own hands, and I suppose she’s right. It is time for new renters.”

  “Well, then,” Mom says, “if you’re willing to rent, could you show us around? I’m Susan, Susan Smith, by the way. And this is Lucy. Did I say that already?”

  Jerry nods and points at each person. “Lucy. Susan. Gretchen. Jerry.” Next, he waves between me and Mom—“Smiths”—and between him and Gretchen—“Sabins. Come on in, I’ll show you around.”

  Gretchen clasps her hands and bounces as if excited. “Ohhh, goodie. I hope you like inside, Lucy. It would be great to have a friend around here to hang out with. You fifteen?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Thought so.”

  “Oh.”

  It’s an educated guess.

  I cock my head and watch Gretchen smiling at us, at me. And while I do find it peculiar, and perhaps a bit forward, for her to assume we’ll be friends and hang out, I sort of appreciate her taking command and having the authority to declare it so. Maybe this slight girl with octopus skin could be my friend. I’m pretty sure she’s not a true Jenny; a Jenny wouldn’t be so outwardly excitable. Wouldn’t go out on a limb and try to rent a ranch all on her own, and thus invite strangers into her life without caution. But this Gretchen seems in need of a friend, and she wants me as a friend, so maybe that’s good enough.

  I scratch my head and continue to watch her smiling and bouncing.

  Jerry and Gretchen go to open the ranch’s front door.

  “What about the shed?” Mom asks, pointing behind us and across the parking area.

  “Oh, right. Right, right,” Jerry says and shifts a microsecond of a glance to Gretchen, which I don’t think Mom catches.

  “That weirdo renter kept his creepy stuff in there,” Gretchen offers.

  Jerry throws his hands in the air and says, “Well, yeah, I suppose, yeah. He did.”

  “Creepy?” Mom asks.

  “No, no,” Jerry says, chuckling. “Gretchen’s dramatizing. It’s just a bunch of tools. He was a woodworker, metalworker, you know. So one of the other unsettling things he did, besides vanishing, was before he left, he locked the shed and put up all those Keep Out signs. I need to get a locksmith down here to pop the locks. Anyway, shed’s not part of the rental. That okay?”

  “Sure, we don’t need storage or anything. But do you think he would come back and try to get inside? I wouldn’t feel safe with some man showing up out of the blue. It’s just me and my daughter. And Allen, actually. Allen, our cat.” Mom nods toward the Volvo. “The ad said pets were fine?”

  “I love cats!” Gretchen says, her smile even wider now.

  “Oh, no worries on the old renter. I’m positive he’s gone for good. And even if he were to show up, no worries. He’s all of five foot two and skinny as a skeleton. Also about eighty. You won’t have problems from Earl. That’s his name. Earl,” Jerry says.

  “Okay, then. I guess,” Mom says.

  We follow behind Gretchen and Jerry into the ranch.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Seems Gretchen was creative with the digital camera, taking shots for the rental ad from strategic angles, so as to give the illusion the interior is way bigger than it really is. So that’s a downer. But it doesn’t change how true the decor and colors truly are.

  Right away we step into a galley kitchen with retro-style but modern turquoise and red appliances: a turquoise refrigerator, a red gas stove, a turquoise toaster, a red dishwasher. The counters are made of thick square tiles with a turquoise, blue, and red flower pattern.

  “Wow,” Mom says, running a finger along the tiles.

  Next up, we spill out of the mouth of the galley kitchen into an open rectangular space, divided by a line of houseplants. On one side is a barn-board dining table with royal-blue velvet chairs. On the other side are two red love seats facing each other. Straight ahead is the back wall with the big picture window cut into twenty panes. The side walls are actually barn wood, as if we are inside a barn and not the interior of a stucco ranch; on them hang forty-by-forty acrylic paintings of green-green, like super green, big-leaf trees with smudges of blue sky as the backdrop. The paint of the trees is thick, the paint layered with a palette knife. Abstract splashes of red make for impressions of cardinals on branches.

  There’s a closed armoire, two cabinets in corners, and those seem modern but made to appear as if they are antiqued natural wood. The same is true of the coffee table and end tables. So to sum up, I’m guessing the functional aspects of the space are from some box store, but from the high-end section meant for wealthy hipsters who want an “authentic” look. Libraries and yard sales dump a lot of home-design magazines, and I always take any and all of them. Interesting lamps in shapes of purple grapes and yellow fish and figurines of blue bunnies, an orange fox, and red cardinals add pops of every other color in the rainbow. Down a hall off the left side of the dining area, I gasp when I see a purple print of an octopus and a jellyfish perusing books in an underwater library. I walk to it like a moth to a bulb.

  “Oh, I think she likes it. The bedroom she’s heading to would be hers,” Gretchen is saying behind me. “The master is on the other side of the living room. I’ll show Lucy her room.”

  I stop at the octopus-jelly-library print.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  “You like it?”

  “I love it.”

  “I made it.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way. In art class. I think you’ll like our school. The art teacher is super rad.”

  Rad is a word Mom says somet
imes. A retro word from a generation before hers. But I let it pass.

  “And weird, I see you like jellyfish. Spooky coincidence,” Gretchen says, pointing to my T-shirt and pendant. “Woo, woo, boo,” she giggles, making ghost sounds. I smile back. It is a cool coincidence. I don’t know about spooky.

  At the end of the hall is a small bathroom. I poke my head in to find the three essentials: sink, toilet, stall shower. All white, subway tiles, silver hardware. Clean on a clinical level. Fern-green towels are folded on a rack for a pop of color and match the one bath mat on the floor.

  “Your bathroom,” Gretchen says.

  She makes lots of declarations. They’re correct, but again, she assumes a lot. She’s grinning so wide at me, I’m forced to grin back. She looks up to do so; I look down. I’m a tower in a city; she’s a house in the country.

  We enter what will be my room if Mom doesn’t freak out or find some reason we need to flee or can’t close the deal with Jerry. My hopeful room is a square with finished walls painted a light taupe. One wall holds two framed, monochromatic green pictures. The queen bed in the center is made up with a blue quilt with a pink coral print, and the curtains on the window match. Opposite the bed is a closed closet, and next to that, a built-in bookcase filled with books. The window is open to the glorious summer field in the out beyond. Wind rustles in the treetops, and I ache so hard to live in this world. Smells like real vanilla, not from extract, like a bottle of concentrated vanilla you buy from the gourmet cooking store.

  “Do you like games?” Gretchen asks from behind, as I step toward the bookcase.

  “Games? Xbox? Are you a gamer?”

  “No, no. Not that kind. I mean like old-school games. Like Scrabble?”

  “Oh yeah. I love Scrabble.”

  “Oh cool!” she says, her eyes wide and bright. “North American rules or British? Daddy and I play by tournament rules, of course, one on one.”