by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 17, Friday 26 August
Bag of art supplies heavy in my hand, I walked up the street toward Olivia’s house. The sun beat down on me, shone off the asphalt like a dark star, until sweat ran down my neck and make my shirt cling to my back. Her street was nice, the sidewalks still with their neat lines, not yet softened by rain and wind, the houses built in that mix of stucco and stone that had been popular years ago in New York and was somehow just reaching West Marshall. A street that was identifiably different from the rest of the town. A street for the wealthy.
Each step made my heart sink lower into my stomach. Mom’s advice, after her display of glee, had been surprisingly practical. What did she like to do? What kind of person was she? What did she do in her free time? Did she have any hobbies? Variations on the same questions, prying more and more information out of me. And it had been helpful; we’d decided on something to do with art, so after a quick walk to Mica’s, the local craft store, I had what I hoped would be the makings of a good date.
And that made me feel awful. Not because of Isaac, at least, not any worse than I normally felt. Mom’s show of happiness for me, which I still half-suspected had been feigned, had put me somewhat at ease about Isaac. My brother would have been thrilled to see me with a girl, probably happier than my parents, considering what we had been through. But each step brought me closer to being in the situation of ‘a date,’ which meant a situation where, by definition, romantic feelings were present if only in their potential forms. And wasn’t that a betrayal of Christopher? I mean, I had already betrayed him once, killed him, so I don’t know why it should bother me so much. But with every step I felt like I was walking across his grave, again and again, each sidewalk slab a span of consecrated ground I was defiling. And for what? For my own selfish desire to be happy? Something I didn’t even deserve, after what I had done.
But the part of it that made me a real bastard was that I wanted to do it—I wanted to be near Olivia, wanted to put my arms around her, feel the crush of her breasts against my chest, the smell of her hair in my nose. I wanted to press my cheek to hers, feel her legs around me waist, I wanted to—
My heart was pounding like a drum. That, that part of it, was what made me a monster. That I wanted it so bad.
The street changed slightly as I came closer to Olivia’s house; the sidewalks were still new, the asphalt gleaming, but the yards didn’t look like rolled-out swaths of sod. The grass was fuller here, a deep green, and the trees were old. Older than the rest of the neighborhood. More shade, which helped with the heat, but did nothing to ease the tightening, chalky taste in the back of my throat. I was half-tempted to turn around, run home, and never talk to Olivia again. But I thought of Mom, how happy she had seemed for a few minutes while we were talking, and I knew I couldn’t. Not after everything else I’d put her through. If Mom wanted to make a show of this, wanted to seem happy for me, who was I to force her hand by taking that away from her? Better to go along with her, pretend she still loved me, and hope that I could somehow repair some of the damage I’d done that way.
Then I saw the number. 1515 Oak Terrace. A two-story house with a wrap-around porch. Light yellow siding, dormer windows, flowers lining the stone path from sidewalk to porch. It was like something taken out of a picture book. There was nothing of the belated trendiness that had marked the first section of the neighborhood; I was surprised to realize that I couldn’t imagine Olivia living in one of those grey-daubed houses. This, though—slightly dated, but beautiful within its own aesthetic—this house was perfect for her. It fit her the way those hipster bangs fit her.
I made myself keep walking when I got to the path; stopping now would make me turn back. Christopher’s face hovered in front of me, flashes of memories—happy memories, tinged with the sorrow of what I had done. Two steps down the path, the denim of my jeans stuck to my legs, the sun pulsing against my head. And then I couldn’t do it anymore; couldn’t betray Christopher, not like this, not again, no matter how much I liked Olivia, no matter how much I wanted someone to like me again. I turned around.
And saw a slightly paunchy, red-necked man standing in the yard next door, waving at me.
Not knowing what else to do, I returned the wave.
The man walked toward me, tossing something to the ground. He had been working at a flower bed, and as I took in the rest of the yard, I saw that it was impeccably manicured. The edge of every flower bed lined with old paving stones, the flowers themselves in perfect patches of color and shape, the trees shady and full. There was something slightly off about the yard—like the grass was cut funny, making it hard to track the lines of his lot. It was just an impression before he reached me.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, putting out one hand. The inside of his arms were white, but the backs were blistered and red with sunburn. “Keith Green. I stopped by Forest at Home today and it was closed. You work there, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. I shifted the art bag, trying to keep it out of sight. “I’m Alex. Alex León.”
“León,” he said. “Your grandfather used to live here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good man, your grandfather. It was a shame he left town as fast as he did. Family business, he said, and then I never heard from him again. But he helped my parents sell an old table they had in the basement, and it made them a pretty penny. They never really got to thank him for that.”
Great. A fan of Grandfather’s fake antiquing business. “He would have been happy to hear that.”
“Is he not in the business anymore?”
“He died,” I said. “A couple years ago.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mr. Green said, and he seemed to mean it.
“Thanks. The store should be open tomorrow, but I’m not sure. Mr. Wood told me that he’s having family problems of his own, so I don’t know what the store hours will be like for the next few days.”
“Not a problem,” Mr. Green said. “Not a problem at all. I’m just trying to get my flowers in top shape. Don’t suppose you have any advice?”
“No, my mom’s the gardener; she’d love to talk to you about it, I’m sure.”
“I’ll have to take you up on that,” Mr. Green said with a smile. “What are you doing out here?”
And there it was. The question that I couldn’t really answer. He’d already seen me walk toward the door and turn away, and I could hear the curiosity in his voice. I guess the truth would have to do.
“Um,” I said. “I’m here to see Olivia.”
“Well don’t let me keep you,” he said. I tried not to sigh in relief; he wasn’t going to press the issue. “Have a great time, Olivia is a special girl.”
And with that, he shook my hand again and ambled over to the flower bed. I turned back to the house; there was no help for it now, no way out of it. Step-step-step, and the porch creaking under my tennis shoes. The door was the kind with the little windows in the center, and this one had six of them, side by side, revealing a frilly curtain and a segment of the entry hall. Wiping the sweat from my fingers, I knocked, the wood cracking against my knuckles.
I put on a pleasant face; it wasn’t exactly a smile, because a genuine smile is hard to fake. But looking pleasant, interested, approachable—that can be done. Putting on a pleasant face is like putting on a well-tailored suit; if it’s done right, no one can tell that your heart is missing. And then the door swung open.
“You must be Alex.” The man who stood in the doorway had to be Olivia’s father; they shared the same nose, and he had her coloring. Friendly-looking, salesman smile, with the perfect, business-executive haircut, but he wore faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Green Acres rolled into one man.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Shane Weir. Come on in; I’m leaving right now, but Olivia’s mother is here, and I’ll go ahead and call Olivia.”
He ushered me into the entry hall, which I now realized wasn’
t an entry hall at all, but the corner of a large living room that dominated the right half of the house. He shut the door and shouted “Olivia” up the stairs before disappearing through a hallway further back. The living room was interesting. Leather couches, flat-screen TV, lots of glass and oil-brushed metal. Trendy. Not what I had expected. But then on the walls, framed posters of old movies, old French bicycle ads, what looked like train timetables.
“Hey,” Olivia said, stepping down the stairs. She smiled, that smile that made the curve of her lips even more perfect, more kissable.
“You look nice,” I said. And she did. A navy blue, polka-dot skirt that came to her knees, along with some sort of blouse/vest combo. Hipstery, but cute. Smart cute.
“Thanks,” she said. “How was your day?”
“Since I saw you at lunch?”
“Sure.”
“Well, the store was closed, so I didn’t have to go into work.”
Her smile faded. “I know, I heard about Mr. Wood’s sister. Melanie lives a couple houses down the street. It’s awful, they don’t know what’s wrong with her. She collapsed on her way to work.”
“How’d you hear about it?” I said. “Mr. Green just stopped me and asked me why the store was closed.”
“Dad’s going to cover Melanie’s work until she’s feeling better.”
“What does she do?”
“Groundskeeper at the cemetery,” Olivia said. “And she cuts the lawn at the parks in the summer.”
That made sense; it was the perfect cover for a grower, spending all her time outside, easy access to her tree whenever she needed it. “And your dad’s going to have time to do all that? What does he do?”
“Lots of stuff,” Olivia said.
“What she means is, I’m between jobs right now,” Olivia’s dad said. “But I’m happy to fill in where I can.” He stood at the hallway, his arm over the shoulder of a petite blonde woman. “This is my wife, Olivia’s mother.”
“Call me Cheryl,” she said, stepping forward and offering me her hand.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said.
“How polite,” Cheryl said. “You’re parents must be so proud of you.”
I flushed and didn’t know what to say; she couldn’t know how deep those words cut, the irony that flashed brighter than any blade behind them. Sophocles himself couldn’t have come up with a better way to drive home my situation.
“Well, I’m off to work,” Shane said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve said that. Nice to meet you, Alex.”
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
With a kiss for Cheryl and a hug for Olivia, Shane made his way out of the house.
“I’ll be in my room, if you need me,” Cheryl said. “Nice to meet you, Alex.”
And like that, Olivia and I were alone. No awful parental grilling. No threatening father. No obsessive, clinging mother. A few lines of clean conversation and it was over. I hadn’t realized how stressed I’d been until I let out a breath.
“Come on, they’re not that bad,” Olivia said, but she was smiling at me.
I realized that I was smiling back. Really smiling. And all my guilt, all my self-doubt, all my self-hate—it vanished, faster than that moment between darkness and dawn. “Bad? They’re really nice.”
“Yeah, I kind of like them.” She darted a glance at the bag in my hand, and then up again to me. “So, what are we going to do?”
“Well, come with me and I’ll show you.”
“That sounds pretty mysterious.”
“That’s what makes this all worth it,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Olivia, sliding her arm through mine. “So far, there are other parts I like even more.” She turned toward the back of the house. “Mom, we’re going out!”
A muffled acknowledgment came in reply. And then we were out the front door, in that time of summer day when the sun fills the sky with a thousand different shades of red and purple and orange, and the promise of a long evening makes the fading heat a small price to pay. Olivia’s eyes ran up and down the street.
“No car,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “Cars are overrated. Bourgeois. Gentrified. I hate cars.”
Hell, not one of these people. The rest of the evening hung around my neck like a stone.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “Relax, Alex. I can drive if you want. Or we can walk.”
I chuckled, not quite sure how to respond, but the funny thing was, I felt relaxed. The tightness across my shoulders was loosening, the knot inside me that made it hard to breathe had vanished. “Alright, well, in order not to offend your sensibilities–” I said.
“My pretended sensibilities,” Olivia interrupted.
“Your pretended sensibilities,” I agreed. “Let’s walk. It’s a little far. Ok?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “It’ll give us time to talk.”
And so we started down her street, past too-new houses that were already out of style, past the anonymous, filler-figures of the men and women who made up this town, this county, this state, this country, this world. When we reached the main road, it was tougher going, since there was no sidewalk, but we walked in the loose gravel on the side. Her neighborhood was a little bit outside the town, on the east side, and we had to go all the way to the west side, where the cemetery was.
“So tell me about yourself,” she said. “You’ve been here for a week or two now, and I don’t think anyone knows anything about you. Unless you count Wyatt, but he’s already told everyone everything he knows. And then probably quite a few things that he made up.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Like what?”
“You’re from New York,” Olivia said.
“True.”
“And you live in Lion House.”
“Also true.”
“And Lion House is haunted.”
I thought of me screaming into my pillow most nights, or lying there unable to sleep, unable to get up, some mornings. Of the echoing silences of the high ceilings that slid steadily downward, forcing us apart.
“Half-true.”
“Which half?” Olivia said.
“Lion House is.”
“Ha ha,” she gave an intentionally false laugh.
“Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”
“Let’s see. You’ve got a brother.”
The tension across my shoulders snapped back into place.
“Had a brother. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said.
I shrugged. Wherever my voice had gone, I couldn’t find it.
We didn’t talk again until we were into the city, well past downtown, following Main Street west and south along the lowering slope of the cityscape. I was an idiot, I knew that. I couldn’t act like that every time someone brought up Isaac. It wasn’t Olivia’s fault he was dead; hell, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. And she was just trying to be friendly. I had ruined this date, ruined my chance with a girl who might have liked me. I stopped us on the corner of the next block, in front of a boarded-up pharmacy.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I should walk you home.”
“Do you want me to go home?” she said. Her voice was soft and low, the way you would talk to a startled animal.
“No, I don’t know, I just thought, after the way I reacted, that you’d—you know, I just thought—”
Her hand slid down my arm, her skin warm against mine, and our fingers slid together. “Let’s keep going,” she said. “I’m enjoying our walk. And we don’t have to talk, if you don’t want to.”
Great. She thought I was one of those suicidal, low self-esteem types. That was even worse than if I had just ruined the date myself.
“So,” I said, forcing my voice to sound normal. “What else have you heard about me?”
She glanced up at me, a small smile on the curve of her mouth. “Well, that you’re dangerous.”
“I do
n’t think Chad would see it that way.”
“Actually, he’s the one telling people. He said you jumped him in the hall after school for no reason, you’re just crazy. He says that’s why he had to beat you up.”
“Great.”
“And that you’re smart.”
“Not if I’m jumping Chad in the hallway.”
“And that you’re very cute.”
I glanced down at her. “Wyatt said that?”
“No,” she said with a laugh, her normal laugh now. It helped melt the tension between us. “That was Mary. Although I think other people might have figured it out for themselves.”
I couldn’t help smiling; it was ridiculous, feeling flattered like this, enjoying the fact that someone liked me so much, but I couldn’t help it.
“So what do you know about me?” Olivia asked.
“Well, you’re into art,” I said. “Photography, painting. Maybe some other stuff.”
“True. Who told you that?”
“Well, Mary and Taylor did help, but I think the big give-away was when I caught you snapping pictures of me in the cafeteria on my first day.”
She actually blushed. Like a bright red blush, noticeable on her pale skin. “Sorry, that must have seemed super freaky. It’s one of the projects I’m working on, a collage of all the people at school. I noticed you—God, I think everyone in the school noticed you the minute you walked in—and thought I’d just snap a few quick shots.”
“I can promise you that I look better in pictures when I don’t have peanut-butter sandwich between my teeth.”
“Thank goodness,” she said.
“You don’t like to talk about your art, or show it to other people,” I said.
“No, I learned my lesson on that one.” I didn’t understand that part, but I decided it was wiser not to ask. She continued, “What else?”
Her brother. I couldn’t say that, not after the way I’d reacted.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. “And I didn’t get any help on that one from Mary.”
For just a second, her fingers tightened around mine. A different silence grew up between us, a comfortable one, the kind that invited all kinds of indecent thoughts about the curve of her collarbone, the pale skin at the neck of her blouse, her breasts under that vest, the way it would feel to put my arm around her, to feel her against me.
Fortunately, I saw the cemetery right then, and I turned us up the path and through the gate.
“The cemetery?” Olivia said.
“I know, I know. I swear, this isn’t some death-obsessed thing, I don’t paint my face white and wear all black.”
“Well, I probably would have noticed the last two.”
“Just bear with me for a minute.”
I took her along one of the side paths, back up the way we had come, but inside the cemetery. It probably wasn’t the best place to take a date, I realized, but my plans had been last minute, and this had been the first thing to come to mind. Not that I knew much of West Marshall anyway. At the highest point in the cemetery, near the back, we came to a stop.
Below us, the rest of the cemetery rolled out in lonely lines of white and green and brown, the city crouched around it, as though this place were a heart gone silent. But the city dropped away into the river, sunset flames playing along the water, and beyond that, stretched out like an impossible Van Gogh canvas, a world of golden grain, shifting in the wind, fire and shadows playing along the gold-white surface. I had only seen this place at night before, at even then it had taken my breath. Right now, though—right now, I felt like I could stretch out, fill that space in front of me, make it mine, and at the same time, make myself part of it. I felt like I could be whole, here, with Olivia, on this small patch of ground that blurred into eternity.
“I know a cemetery’s not the most romantic place,” I said, “but I haven’t seen a lot of West Marshall yet, and—”
“Wow,” she said, putting her free hand on my arm. “It’s incredible. Thank you.”
I could feel my nervousness breaking out into a smile on my face; God, how I wanted her to like me. The way a drowning man wanted a piece of a wood, a life-jacket, anything. “That’s not all. Now we’re going to have a competition.”
“We are?”
I opened the bag and pulled out two of those ready-made canvases, already stretched on frames and ready to be hung. Then a small bottle of water, a pair of brushes, and an unopened set of water-colors.
“Winner gets to choose where we go to dinner.”
“And who’s going to decide the winner?”
I did my best to look offended. “I promise you, I’m an impartial judge when it comes to stuff like this.”
For a moment, I sensed her hesitation. I knew this would be risky, the way she had reacted when I’d asked to see her art. But I hadn’t been able to think of anything else. If she said no now, well, I guess it was dinner and a movie. And probably an awkward couple of years to follow as we tried to avoid each other. The moment grew longer and longer, looming over me. She was going to say no.
“Alright,” she said. “Alright, I trust you.” And I knew she wasn’t talking about my judging the competition. I felt a wave of shame; the last people to trust me had died because of it. Both of them betrayed. But I was with Olivia, and I was happy, and for a time I didn’t have to be that person, so I pushed it away.
“Ready, set, go,” I announced.
It was easily one of the best nights of my life. Olivia mocked me mercilessly for my attempt to paint the scene before us, and I gave as good as I got—or, as best I could. She was incredible. When we finished, mine looked like something a child would bring home from pre-school, the lines uneven, the colors running together. Hers, by contrast—it wasn’t like a photograph, really. Not the kind of representative art that proliferated until the development of the camera. Nor was it abstract, or even impressionistic. It was something else, distinctly hers, like the way she smiled, or the lines of her body. Something beautiful and unique and deeply precious to me. The lines of wheat, the green of the cemetery, even the looming presence of the grower’s tree, she captured all of them in quick strokes that belied something deeper, moving under the canvas, the essence of that vastness I had sensed. Something I could fall into, become part of, something that, even in its immensity, was as intimate as an embrace. And right then, when all of this was registering on the edge of my awareness, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the curve of her jaw, the way her cheek dimpled when she smiled, the mixture of green and brown in her hazel eyes. I forgot everything about myself, felt myself buoyed up by that immensity, and I leaned in and kissed her. A heartbeat later, she kissed me back.
Olivia was the second person I had kissed in my life. The differences were there, as clear and sharp as the cuts along my side, but there were similarities as well. The tidal wave of hormones, the thrill, the arousal that tightened the skin along my neck. The feel of connecting with someone.
She won the contest, but by the time we finished, the sun had disappeared, and stars were popping out overhead. Nothing was open in West Marshall by then—at least, nowhere a pair of teenagers could go. The bars along the river were out of the question. So I walked her home, apologized for the lack of dinner, and she made me promise to take her to dinner next week. It was like someone making you promise to collect on a lottery ticket; I was happy to do so. I walked home that night, under the stars, and for the first time in a long time, I really was happy. And when I couldn’t sleep that night, it was because of the prickles along my skin thinking about her, and the way it had felt to slide one hand along her back and pull her in closer. When I did sleep, the dreams were—well, they were different.
