The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  I added my reflection in his dark eyes, to make the dream seem more real.

  At dawn, I woke stretched out on the cold tarp, falling for a metaphor.

  Chapter 41

  Grant

  Voices and bike clatter woke me from a hard sleep.

  “Don’t any of you scamps go to church?” I yelled from my sleeping bag.

  “Yes,” Penelope said.

  “Only on Christmas and Easter,” Jill said.

  “It’s Monday,” Kai said.

  “No,” Clover said from very close.

  I opened my eyes to see her face pressed against the mesh window of the tent.

  “Penelope?” I called out.

  “Yes?”

  “Remember what I told you when we first met?”

  “Hey, Clover,” Penelope said. “Give the guy some privacy, yeah?”

  “Oh.” I heard the revelation in Clover’s voice. “Sorry, Grant.”

  “No prob.” I zipped up the window flaps and spent a tricky few minutes getting dressed in the too-small space. When I emerged, Jill stared at my T-shirt and scrunched her nose. “Um?”

  “Yeah?” I checked my clothes, but everything seemed in order. I even turned my back to check my pants zipper. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Kai snickered from his perch on the kitchen log.

  “You wore that shirt on Saturday,” Jill said.

  “Well, duh. And the day before that. It’s still the cleanest shirt I have.” To mask my shame, I stood tall and faked a proud lift of my chin. “You guys rate my best.”

  Jill and Penelope exchanged a look, but Clover was the one who spoke. “It’s dirty and you smell.”

  “Well, then.” I pressed my arms tighter against my sides and tried to develop a sudden talent for telekinesis to keep my stink molecules to myself. “I showered last night, so it must be my clothes that stink. I’m sorry. I’ll go to a laundromat when I do Oliver’s errands this week.” I glanced at Kai, hoping he didn’t count my stench against me.

  Kai gave me a rare smile.

  “Oh, I get it,” I told him, relieved. “It amuses you to see me on the hot seat?”

  Kai’s smile widened and he nodded.

  “We can show you how to do laundry in the sink in your new kitchen,” Penelope offered. I’d texted her about the courtyard.

  “I tried handwashing in a bucket already. It doesn’t work. And stuff takes a zillion years to dry. And then it rains,” I groused.

  “Penelope told us you have an awning at the kitchen,” Clover said.

  “You’re ganging up on me.” They were, and it felt spectacular. I told myself it was because they cared about me, not only the purity of their air space.

  “Well?” I asked Kai. “What do you think?”

  He studied me with his serious eyes. The girls and I all watched him and waited.

  “You’re camping,” Kai finally said. “You’re supposed to smell.”

  I grabbed Kai and raised my arm to give him a playful dose of my shirt’s stink. I expected him to recoil and push me away, but he plowed into me like he’d been dying for me to reach for him. I decided I was done waiting for him to tell me in his own time what troubled him. Somehow I needed to get it out of him before I left Vashon.

  With a pat on Kai’s back, I let him go and began to gather my dirty laundry and stuff it into my daypack. “Come on, then. Let’s go get me some basic life skills.”

  The kids biked on ahead. Kai had insisted on taking my daypack. It made him wobble down the trail, off-balance and slow. I draped Mitch’s cloth shopping bags, which I’d filled with cooking gear and cans of food, over my shoulders, hoisted the ice chest, and followed.

  The picnic table—another handmade Rossi creation, I assumed—was heavy enough it required most of us to haul it across the courtyard. Kai and Clover declined to help until the table had cleared the honeysuckle bush and the risk of bees.

  We sat at the relocated picnic table and grinned at one another.

  I faked an impatient scan of the courtyard. “Has anyone seen our waiter? I can’t believe our food is taking this long.”

  Clover, bless her, laughed so hard at my joke her sweet, round face lost its tension.

  It should have worried me that awkward, artsy tweens were becoming the best friends I’d ever had, but it didn’t. I wasn’t artsy, but I was enough of a sad loser to consider myself lucky to have some pals.

  “Sorry I don’t have much to offer you as my first guests,” I told the kids.

  “What do you have?” Clover asked.

  “Let’s have a look in the cabinets for plates or bowls.” I stepped backward off the bench and lifted Kai up and out by his armpits. “Kai and I can fix us a snack.”

  The girls found art supplies, tablecloths, kitchen gadgets, and baskets with handles. In a plastic bin pulled from a lower cabinet, Clover found dishes in the colors of Oliver’s hair and skin. I turned over the plate she handed me. L Rossi 1978 had been scratched into the clay—a year or so before Oliver was born, I thought.

  I wondered what it was like for Oliver to live in a home stuffed with beautiful items made by people he adored. People gone forever. It struck me that Oliver’s life might be harder than I’d realized.

  I clicked the lid into place on the bin of dishes and shoved it back into the cabinet. “Let’s not use these.”

  Clover nodded. “Good idea.”

  “Here’s the plan.” Penelope put her hands on her hips. “Work first, snack after. It’s time for your hand-laundering lesson, Grant.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “We’ll use the dish soap I found in the cabinet,” Jill said. She instructed me at the sink, then Penelope showed me how to spread my washed T-shirt on a towel, fold in the towel edges, and roll it. Clover watched the entire process with intense focus, as if her life depended on learning it.

  “Totally. Freaking. Brilliant,” I said.

  Kai looked up at me. “Mom lets me sit on the towel sometimes to mash out the water.”

  We hung damp towels, pants, and shirts from the clothesline Penelope had strung across a corner of the courtyard.

  I was hanging up the last towel and listening to Clover and Penelope discuss a teacher at art camp when I caught movement beyond the courtyard entrance. I kept my eyes fixed on that spot until I caught another movement. It wasn’t Oliver. It was a kid.

  I hustled into the yard, but he’d gone. A glimpse of black hair at the edge of the lawn, just for a second. A moment later, a boy stepped out from behind an oak tree, like he wanted to make sure I saw him before he disappeared.

  I turned back to the picnic table. “Is there a tall boy with long, black hair at art camp? I saw someone watching us, but he ran away.”

  “No,” said Penelope.

  Clover looked thoughtful. “Not at art camp, but if he was skinny, it could be Abelino. He lives down the road from me. He wanted to go to art camp, but his mom didn’t have the money.” She dipped a carrot stick in the puddle of peanut butter in her bowl and shrugged. “I only get to go because I save up all year.”

  “Really?” Penelope asked.

  I could tell Clover felt embarrassed.

  “Well,” I said, to distract Penelope from taking charge of Clover’s finances. “If you see Abelino around, tell him to join us.”

  “What’s he like?” Jill asked Clover.

  “Nice, I guess. I don’t really know. He’s from Mexico. He and his mom only moved in a couple of months ago. I know he doesn’t have a bike.”

  “We might have an extra bike at home Abelino could use,” Penelope said. “Except it’s got a problem with the brakes.”

  “My bike has a problem with brakes too.” Clover set down her carrot and shivered. “Scares me every time I have to go down a hill.”

  I
felt a tingle of inspiration. “Hey, guess what I saw in a cubby in the workshop?”

  “A sailor’s hat?” Kai muttered.

  The girls and I stared at him, but Kai didn’t lift his head from his drawing of a man in a boat.

  “Um. No,” I said with a laugh, “but that’s a very interesting guess. I saw bike tools and repair manuals. Who wants to be our bike expert?”

  Jill’s hand shot into the air so far she stood up. “Me. Me, please. Can we go and look at them now?”

  I pointed at her. “You’re it.”

  We cleaned up and I locked the panels. When I glanced around the courtyard to make sure we hadn’t left out any food, I noticed one of the louvered windows behind the rose trellis had been opened an inch. I took a step toward the yard to hide behind a rhododendron.

  The kids chatted about their bicycles as they walked to the workshop.

  I adjusted my vision to try to see into the house, saw only indistinct darkness.

  And then a flash of copper hair.

  Chapter 42

  Oliver

  My friend Maddie showed up Tuesday afternoon with a staffing issue at the auto supply store she’d taken over from her dad. I wasn’t a business expert, but she came around now and then for my sideways solutions, as she called them.

  When she arrived, I was trying on a pair of homemade socks Clementine had brought me on her way home from work.

  “Hi, Maddie,” I said. “Mind if Clem joins us?”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be in the way,” Clem said.

  Maddie gave us a big smile. “Not at all. Hey, Clementine.”

  I settled us in the library with a tray of tea paraphernalia. Maddie and Clementine updated each other on their lives, which provided a welcome distraction from my new obsession—an uncomfortable awareness that I was jealous of Grant’s posse of tweens.

  I was having issues with reality.

  The cozy domesticity I’d witnessed as I spied on Grant and the tweens setting up the kitchen—their humor and gentleness with one another—had cast a spell over me, turned me into a wraith who lurked and longed but lacked the substance to join them.

  On the surface, the conversations I overhead between Grant and the kids were nothing remarkable. Grant chatted, light and breezy, but he was almost painfully real, and the kids seemed compelled to share their pain and suffering with him. Grant never pushed, but his interested, relaxed silence spoke of acceptance. The kids opened, invited him into their aches.

  I’d formed a theory that significant pieces of Grant remained locked in his childhood, keeping him stuck and unable to engage more effectively in the world of adults. The notion of Grant in the midst of a childhood do-over on my property intrigued me.

  No wonder the tweens doted on Grant, included him, and confided in him. He was one of them.

  While I mulled, Clementine solved Maddie’s staff problem without me, even down to the details. When they were finished, they turned to stare at me.

  “What?” I poured myself another cup of tea and settled back in the armchair. “It’s a great solution. You didn’t even need me.”

  “You seem…” Maddie started.

  “Distracted,” Clementine finished.

  “I didn’t want to butt in,” I lied. I couldn’t wait for them to leave. I wanted to find Grant and tell him his assignment for week three and see how he reacted.

  “Clem says you’re taking July off this summer, in addition to your usual August break,” Maddie said.

  “That’s right.” It wouldn’t be a hardship for Maddie, but I didn’t want her to be counting on me when I didn’t have the mental space for her conundrums. All I wanted to do was figure Grant out and paint. After he left, I’d dive into the mural even more during August, come out on the other side in September, ready again for visitors.

  Maddie’s goodbye hug lingered, like she thought I needed comfort. I slid away from Clementine’s pat on the back.

  “Call me later?” Clementine asked.

  I waved from the porch in lieu of a nod, then turned on my phone, eager to locate Grant. A series of pings alerted me to a cascade of messages, all from Grant and all photos, except for one text message: Wk 2 self portr.

  The first photo, a bird’s-eye view, showed an arrangement of tools and hardware on the surface of a worktable in the toolshed. I recognized Grant’s face, detailed in drill bits, with shiny washers for eyes and a spray of black netting for hair. The tips of his boots showed at the edge of the photo. He’d stood on the table to get the shot.

  It took me a few minutes to recognize the tweens in the other photos, which I assumed were also self-portraits. Penelope’s braces rendered in a row of shiny nails. A metal hoop for Clover’s round face.

  I laughed with delight. I loved them.

  I shot Grant a text—These are fucking brilliant—and clambered down the front porch steps to jog around to the toolshed to talk with Grant and the kids about what they’d created.

  As I neared the toolshed, the silence struck me. I heard only the shush of a breeze, and felt an unfamiliar frisson of loneliness.

  I’d come out of hiding, but there was no one to show myself to.

  I bent over my phone to typed another text. Want to come over and find out your assignment for week three?

  A few minutes later, Grant texted back, Sorry, sleeping.

  I checked the time stamp on the self-portrait messages. Grant had sent them the day before. Shit. I’d worked on the mural for two days with my phone off, stopping only to topple onto the couch for a few hours at a time.

  It’s almost six p.m., I typed to Grant. Why are you sleeping now?

  Water shower food… relaxed enuf to sleep for real.

  The dire reality of Grant’s situation snapped into view again, dispelling my irritation that he wasn’t around when I wanted him to be. For the first time in weeks, Grant had enough resources and comfort to… rest.

  Fuck, I was such a dick.

  A few minutes later, Grant sent another message. Tell me by text?

  I decided I was too excited about the assignment to wait until I saw him. Wk 3: Plan a tween adventure and do it. Plus errands in town. No manual labor this week.

  Grant texted back right away: Reward?

  Washing machine access.

  The sweet way Jill and Penelope had shown Grant how to do laundry by hand in the courtyard had been heartwarming, but it had taken hours of dedicated work. After the kids left, Grant had spent another hour washing out his underwear and socks.

  I’d decided that since they were all children, including Grant, I’d give him an assignment of a kid adventure, topped with a labor-saving reward, so they’d have more time to play together.

  Grant texted back one word: Understood.

  For ten minutes, I stood on my lawn and scrolled back through the portrait photos.

  They weren’t enough.

  My first few steps inside the toolshed made my heart race.

  I swallowed the anxiety and pushed the door all the way open to let in as much light and air as possible, then dared a few more steps. The self-portraits spread over the central worktables drew me farther inside.

  They absolutely amazed me.

  I took a lot of photos, tried to capture their three-dimensionality, eventually ran out of new angles.

  The toolshed door seemed less heavy when I slid it closed. I felt less heavy as I walked back to the house.

  In the kitchen, I assembled a delicious lunch of food Grant had made, which I ate alone. Afterward, I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and knelt to resume the delicate work of painting grass stems.

  The throb of silence made my hand shake.

  I traded the small brush for a larger one, and stood to work on the deep shadows in the background, which felt more familiar.

  Chapter 43
r />   Grant

  I wasn’t at my campsite napping when Oliver texted me the week three assignment, but I was headed in that direction. I’d started on a hike, but then turned around, too weary to manage it.

  I paused at the edge of Violetta Road to gaze at a blackberry bush and daydream about blackberry cobbler.

  But I don’t have an oven.

  “Damn it,” I said aloud.

  I walked on and wondered if Oliver might trade half a pan of cobbler for the use of one of his three ovens. As much as I appreciated Oliver’s assistance, he remained an irritation. So many ovens and art supplies and wild shit filling up space in the house. So many tools in the workshop. So much free time and creativity. And yet, beneath it all, under Oliver’s exterior persona of eccentric artist, I detected a sad waif, lost even though he had a home.

  The image of a trapped animal came to mind. A burnished red fox, wily but caught, a trickster bested by the unexpected. I closed my eyes, tried to catch the fox’s eyes, to see if he’d let me free his paw. He growled, avoided my gaze, bled to death from pride and fear.

  I shook my head to clear the disturbing image, to wake myself up, and tripped over a blackberry vine, shoelaces tangling in the thorns.

  I squatted to free myself and got an idea.

  Maybe what Oliver needed was as simple as an invitation to play. A sweep of my hand cleared gravel to the side. With my finger in the dust, I drew a map, searching my memory for a blackberry thicket big enough for what I had in mind.

  A car scrunched behind me. I considered standing, but wasn’t ready to abandon my map. I spared a look over my shoulder. A car I didn’t recognize emerged from Oliver’s driveway and made a right turn away from me. A second car followed—Clementine’s maroon Volvo. Since the day I’d heard—okay, eavesdropped on—her session with Oliver, I’d met her briefly, on the front porch. She seemed like a woman of gentle extremes. Extremely polite. Extremely kind. Extremely sad. She drove toward me at two miles an hour—another extreme—perhaps to minimize the dust cloud. When she reached me, she stopped the car.