Dark Things I Adore
Page 23
“Coral,” I say gently, alarmed to hear this. I reach out to clasp her hand gently, but she pulls it away.
“And what the fuck are you playing at?” Brady demands of Moss. Moss flinches. “What kind of sick fuck are you? I can see the paintings behind you. They’re of Cindy. A miserable, monster Cindy. It’s horrible! Don’t you understand that that’s not her—she’s sick, you asshole! Do you get off on that?” Brady stutter-steps toward the cabin door, and Moss jerks backward in fright. I grab Brady’s arm, and Coral puts herself against his chest, screaming.
“What in the living daylights—?” Old Gus’s voice wedges into the cracks between us, and suddenly he’s there. He waves me back and pulls Coral gently aside and inserts himself on the first step of Moss’s porch, between Brady at ground level and Moss up in the cabin. “This all has got to stop! It’s got to stop, you hear!” Brady is red faced and heaving, seeming to look through Gus right into Moss.
“You listen to me,” Brady growls, speaking directly to Moss. “If you don’t leave her alone, I will come back here myself and mess you up. Do you understand? I don’t want to see you near her ever again. If I do—I swear it—I’ll kill you.”
“Brady!” Coral wails, horrified.
“This is not a game, Cindy! This is your life!” Brady shouts.
“That is enough of that! Mr. Bouchard, please take your leave! You’re going with him, Cynthia, and that’s that.” It’s jarring to hear Gus use her given name. Harsh. “You’re done here. Let go. Fired. Whatever you want to call it. Early maternity leave—”
“Gus!” Moss cries, his face twisted in horror. He grabs at his hair. “You can’t do that!”
“No!” Coral is squalling, nearly falling to her knees. Brady bears her up. “No!” She collapses into his chest, crying. My heart hammers.
“Stay away, Cynthia. Stay away for a while. Get some rest,” Old Gus tells her, and Brady is nodding at this.
“This is—this is crazy! She’s allowed to do whatever she wants!” Moss bellows, frantic.
“Juniper, why don’t you help Mr. Bouchard get Cynthia down to his truck,” Old Gus tells me, looking weary and upset. We all seem to freeze for a moment, taking this all in. Coral is in shambles. Moss looks panicked, Brady vindicated. Gus tired, quiet.
I look around the commons and see a few rubberneckers watching from a distance. I go to Coral’s right side, and Brady takes her left. We hold her hands. Brady rests his hand on her back.
“Okay now,” I whisper near her ear. “It’s alright.”
She’s still crying, loudly, but she’s not fighting us. We lead her away from Focus and down to the lot.
“I have to-to come b-back,” Coral keens as we reach the messy lot, nodding her head, freaked as a spooked horse, eyes bulging.
“Sure, of course,” I coo. “We can talk about that,” I say, looking up at Brady, who finally nods his appreciation when he sees she’s going to go with him without too much of a fight. We both realize we have to say whatever we need to say to get her to go home and get help.
Mantis climbs out of the truck as we approach, and I feel every muscle in my body tense up. He somehow looks bigger than I remember him. Or I feel smaller.
“Looks like we gotta keep a better eye on you,” Mantis says, placing a hand on Coral’s shoulder as he and Brady help her into the cab of the pickup. His hand looks so big on her small body. He looks at me with bemusement.
“You—you okay, Cor?” I ask, voice weak. She doesn’t look at me as they settle her in the middle of the bench. The two men slide into the truck on either side of her.
Bookends.
Mantis pulls the passenger door shut, and suddenly Coral is behind glass.
“Thank you,” Brady calls through the cab, his voice muffled.
“Sure,” I reply numbly, stepping back as Brady starts the truck up and turns it around. Mantis tips a salute to me with two fingers through the window, and it somehow feels vindictive. Like he has gotten his way. I watch as they take Coral away, taillights sinking in their descent of the driveway, disappearing around the bend.
Cold shivers wrack my body, and I feel strung taut.
I eventually turn toward the commons. Toward Focus. Toward Moss.
His face, even from this distance, looks devastated. Terrified. His body trembles in the doorway, his hand clutching the frame as if for support.
A bolt of hatred radiates from his body to mine. It says, You took her from me.
He ducks inside and slams the door with such force, it sounds like a gun going off.
Nine
Natural Order
Thesis
Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax
Piece #8: See Me
Oil and mixed media on canvas. 12″ x 12″.
[Image of a gnarled jumble of abstracted, paper-white birch trees and oversize, overlapping iron-gray boulders evocative of a bird’s nest. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]
Note on a sticky note found tucked under laminate flooring in the laundry room during a renovation of the Dunn residence.
the baby is here it
came early.
—Jan89. CD.
Note on yellow legal paper found folded inside a copy of Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion in the den at the Dunn residence.
the baby is MINE is the
baby the baby is Eveline
mine
is my baby Eveline
my DAUGHTER and Brady
is gone he left he’s
done with me with us says I’m too much now
that I’m off the MEDS
he can TELL even though
I lie and tell him I still take them
he REFUSED to be what she needs
a FATHER
I said haven’t I been BETTER since
we learned about her
about Evie
he said yeah he said for a WHILE
but that ended a while ago
when you ABANDONED your plan
your treatment
which feels like he’s blaming M
who he doesn’t even really know
so I hate him for that because
M (M) sees me is the only one who
sees me
—Jan89. CD.
Note on Lisa Frank stationery found in a tea tin in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom closet in the Dunn residence.
I’ve drawn some pictures of
HER
some sketches when she’s been napping I should have been
napping too I KNOW but I can’t it’s like I CAN’T and
when she’s peaceful she is so BEAUTIFUL so I sketch her when I can
the drawings are not very good somehow she is so beautiful but the drawings
are not it’s like
I can’t
SEE her.
—Feb89. CD.
Note on torn graph paper found in a tea tin in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom closet in the Dunn residence.
I sneak sneak sneak back to King City
Like a ghost, unseen, only felt
because
M wants to draw me he wants to keep drawing me and he tells me to keep drawing he says he likes me this way in this crackedwideopen way and he says it’s good it’s better being around him I’m better
it’s beautiful
to keep letting myself be raw and empty and keep NOT taking my meds and stare blank eyed at walls and at HER and just let him
paint
and paint and paint me and now I bring
Evie and
she has colic
she screams and SCREAMS all day and she
screams and screams all NIGHT and M hates it and he LOVES it and I think he hates her and I think he loves her
r /> for the way she makes me all broken and broke down and skeletal and turned inside out and at least
he likes ME
some kinda way at least he still lets ME come to him when I need to
we exhaust ourselves and deplete and RANSACK and ruin ourselves
down in my clearing
all three of us
sometimes all four of us
and
M says sure okay my canarybananagoldenrodlemonyellow girl
but that’s just the way I LIKE you.
—Feb89. CD.
Drawings on loose-leaf sheets found in a sandwich bag in the roughed hollow of a birch tree on Lupine Valley property.
[A rough pencil sketch, ovoid, a potato, a potato trying to be a baby, formless, blurry.]
Title: Evie.
—Feb89. CD.
[A rough pencil sketch, a baby, human, naked, with discernible hands and feet that are formed more like the claws of birds. The talon-hands reach toward a throat, a chest, a disembodied person, maybe a woman, naked. Scratches. Gashes.]
Title: Evie.
—Feb89. CD.
Note on water-stained, loose-leaf paper found in a sandwich bag in the roughed hollow of a birch tree on Lupine Valley property.
mom says there is something
MISSING
in me
I think she has
SEEN
what I have done
fingernails and pricks and burns and bruises, cuts getting bigger
she wants me to think
up
to think UP
like my necklace, the dove
but
a GHOUL
like me it could only ever be
an anchor
too heavy
to lift my head above
its shine.
—Mar89. CD.
Juniper
January 19, 1989
Coral’s official due date is two weeks away.
But here the baby is, before me, two weeks old, two weeks outside of Coral’s body already. Coral had gone into difficult preterm labor on a Sunday evening while home with Brady. An ambulance had been called. All pain medications had been refused, and so Coral suffered through an agonizing, dicey, ten-hour delivery. Neither Coral nor the baby had been up to Lupine Valley to see us since the birth, and Coral had refused almost everyone from Lupine Valley from coming to see her.
But Moss? Yes. Of course.
She allowed Moss to see her. I know because I’ve seen the drawings. Found them one day, by accident, while I waited for Moss to return to Focus from a colleague’s cabin; we had plans for a hike to the Ledge. He had a cache of drawings of Coral and the baby partially hidden under his mattress pad. But I saw the edges of them poking out and my curiosity got the better of me. There she was. Coral. Coral’s postpartum body, its soft, slack belly. Her swollen breasts. Her exhausted face. Ten, twenty of them, all in different light. Different sizes. Different emotional compositions. The baby always a small, tight ball of expression and withholding—but looking less harrowed as each drawing progressed. And they’re dated. All between January fourth and January fourteenth. The baby was born on January third. Moss denies he’s seen her, seen them, but I know better.
The baby is a scant thing with squinty, puffy eyes, and dark fuzz on its head. A girl. Coral has her swaddled in a beautiful blue blanket Hillock knitted for her. Gus invited her back—for a visit—so we could all meet the baby. He feels bad for her, I know. So we stand in a circle around her in the mess hall as she shows the baby off to all of us gathered—Moss, Gus, Thorn, River, Hillock, and Ember, the new cleaner. But no Zephyr. Zephyr is gone. She left at the end of the fall session to go be with her sister, who just moved to America from Senegal, in Austin, Texas. I understand that her sister needs Z’s support. Z understands I need Lupine Valley. We made promises to find each other when I am ready to leave this place. I hope that we both remember.
“My dad thinks she looks just like Brady.” Coral looks down into her daughter’s face, very serious, as if trying to see who’s in there. The mention of Brady freezes us all up.
“No, no—spitting image of her mother!” Hillock coos, trying to elevate the mood, trying to distract her from the fact that Brady is gone. It’s hard to believe, but he left her. And the baby. Coral has not shared the details. But I’m sure Moss knows. Moss always knows. He just chooses what to share, and that, so far, is not one of the things he’s chosen.
I study Coral, a hunched, exhausted wisp. Even wearing her layers of winter clothes—clunky boots, sagging coat, mustard-yellow scarf, blue hat, red mittens sticking out of her pockets—Coral looks slight. Too thin. Gus claims he heard from his friend Thelma (of Thelma’s Landing) that the baby came prematurely because Coral was (and is, I’d argue) underweight and was feeling incredible stress. I believe both claims.
“So, what’s her name?” Old Gus asks, snapping pictures of the baby, of the group surrounding Coral and the baby, on and on. I watch Coral lift her eyes and watch Gus snap picture after picture. She looks at him like she can’t quite understand what he’s doing.
“Eveline. I call her Evie.”
“And what about her Lupine Valley name?” Moss asks sarcastically, his expression dark, his eyes locked on the baby. Everyone laughs except for Coral. Except for me.
February 8, 1989
Now me and Moss and Coral share a secret. I know that Coral sneaks into Lupine Valley under the cover of darkness via the access road. Most of the time she is without Evie as she trudges through the deep, wet snow in the middle of the night, lantern in hand, backpack strapped on. Moss lets her in, and she stays tucked away with him as long as she can reasonably manage.
I knew she was back when I found one of her signature notes tacked to my door.
For now I come alone but soon the third will follow
—Jan89. CD.
I wondered if the note was referring to Evie, but Evie stays with Coral’s parents most of the time these days. I think they are more or less the guardians, to be honest. I went straight to Focus when I found the note, and after a brief blockade at the door, he let me in. And they made me swear not to tell. What finally got me to agree was the fact that Coral seemed…okay. She seemed more present than she had right before the baby came. Less vacant. More at peace. Less frantic.
Not everyone is meant to be a mother, I figure. Not everyone is made to be a housewife at nineteen. So I’m leaving them to their compact. Whatever that may be.
February 12, 1989
My new wool socks, bottle of cranberry juice, dental floss, burnt-umber and cadmium-orange oil paints, Moss’s soup and Coral’s toothpaste are sitting in a paper bag in the back seat. So is Evie, in her car seat, sleeping. Coral’s parents both had to work today, and Coral couldn’t…handle her. So here we are. I look at Evie’s perfect little face with its chubby cheeks in the rearview mirror, my hands clutched around the wheel. We’re sitting in the parking lot of the Shaw Public Library in Greenville.
I grab the Coral note I found slipped under my door this morning and read it again.
With him, there are no accidents. Justice for Ashley Pelletier.
—Feb89. CD.
I shove the note in my pocket then get out of the car and open the back passenger door.
“Hey, sweet pea, hey—shh, shh,” I whisper as I unstrap little Evie and cradle her against my shoulder. “Just gonna do a little research,” I whisper are she gurgles. But her eyes stay closed.
Twenty minutes later she’s still asleep but strapped to my chest, her little cheek pressed like a flower, some drool spilling on me. I’m sitting in front of the microfiche, heart pounding hard enough that I worry it will wake the baby.
In 1982, a local high school senior named Ashley Pelletier was shot and killed in an a
pparent hunting accident. She was wearing white gloves. Men’s. The hunter mistook the white for the upturned tail of a deer. He shot and killed her.
“These things happen,” the hunter was quoted as saying. “It’s terrible, but these things happen.” The hunter was sentenced to ten months in jail for manslaughter. He ended up serving about six.
Negligent. Unfortunate. Tragic. Heartbreaking. Words like these pepper all of the articles from the time.
Because worst of all, the hunter was her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend was Mantis.
February 13, 1989
When I came back from the Shaw Public Library yesterday, burdened with this horrid new knowledge about Mantis, I went into Focus and found just Coral there. I handed her Evie, who was swaddled in a blanket inside an innocuous wicker basket, which had been covered by another blanket. Like I might be carrying bread. She told me Moss was at the Ledge. I told her everything I read, everything I found out. She nodded sagely as Evie began to cry.
“Your note—I figured that you were telling me to—” I started, unsure how to finish.
“Yes,” she affirmed, looking worn.
“It wasn’t an accident? Right? He murdered her?” I asked, my voice hushed, trembling. Her eyes locked with mine, wise, world weary. She tilted her chin, looking very, very sad, her blond hair pulled back in a loose, greasy ponytail. A nod. I swallowed, thinking of the occasions I went shooting with him, alone. Thinking of how Coral found us that day trying to tell me something. Or tell him. A warning. “But—how do you know? I mean, for sure?”
“Oh, Junie,” she sighed, and she looked at me with more affection than she ever had. “I just couldn’t keep it in, don’t you see? Promises hurt sometimes.” I searched her face as Evie’s cries rose into keening wails. Coral picked up the baby, lifted her shirt, and started breastfeeding. The baby calmed and ate. “What’s done is done. I thought it was important that you know. That someone would know.”
“But Coral. What—”
The door creaked open behind me and frigid air struck us three women as we sat hunched together, tight as a coven. It was Moss. Coral made eyes at me that commanded: Not a word to anyone. For me.
Ten