Dark Things I Adore

by Katie Lattari

  I wonder if my grandparents ever found any of them, and if they did, what they did with them. I wonder if Brady ever saw any of them or if she hid them so well, he never knew they existed. Brady Bouchard, the man who ran. He got married to a woman from Portland and gave full custody to my grandparents the year after Cindy died, leaving his father’s timber business. He lives in Brunswick with that same woman now. I only know a few things about Brady: he owns his own car detailing place, he has two kids—half-siblings of mine, I suppose—he’s a town councilman. But I don’t really know him at all. He gave me up way back then, and I did the same. My grandparents just told me they were mine, and I was theirs, and that’s all that mattered. They only told me about Brady later. I never cared to seek him out or meet him; he was too abstract for me. He never cared to seek me out and meet me. And that was that.

  When I put enough of the notes together to figure out what, basically, had happened, it took me almost no time at all to find Max. The internet is wild like that. Max Durant. He was still an artist. He was still seeking approval and the spotlight. Everything I could cross-check, I cross-checked, and it all panned out. I made it my goal to get into the Boston Institute for the Visual Arts, where he taught, and I did. I crammed my final undergrad studies at UMaine, worked tirelessly to improve my craft, and applied. And it turned out I had the talent to get in. If I hadn’t, I simply would have spent time in Boston and found ways to cross paths with him. He did enough public appearances. I would have made it work no matter what, but having the inside track made everything much easier. Word was he had a thing for students.

  In the May BIVA email newsletter, the feature story was about Max. And about how President Jordana A. Switzer, PhD, had arranged for Max’s painting Architecture of Radiance to be displayed in the Polk Room of the Boston Institute Gallery starting in the new academic year. As a tribute. The newsletter did not indicate if it would be in the Warhol spot or not. I remember just shaking my head, amazed and disappointed at Juniper’s unending capacity for weakness where Max is concerned.

  But now that it is all done, now that Max is dead, and Marc is dead, and Coral is avenged, my sleep is easy and peaceful. I hardly think about Max and Marc anymore.

  I still have scores more of Mom’s notes and drawings that were not used in my thesis. I got them back from Lance about two months after Max died, feeling it was safe to make the exchange by then. I think it’s important to keep that stuff. I think it’s important to remember some things. To remember what happened to my mother. To remember how one struggling woman tried so hard to get better. To remember how two men, one ambitious, one vengeful, abused her. To remember how I got here, and what I’ve done, even if the truth of her life and death exists only on these myriad disjointed, rough little scraps of paper.

  Her Dark Things, though, might be displayed eventually. My mother might get her day in the sun after all. As for the rest of the notes and drawings, they are silent and buried far away in the basement, huddled under the forgotten ephemera of a woman long dead. But even so, they persist. The only remaining records of her agony, which I have no right to erase from this earth.

  I look down at the knife in my hand, and I close it up as I sit under the glaring sun, skimming the weapon through the cold Moosehead water, the boat just drifting lazily and very slowly outward, farther. I should drop it in, let it go. Cast this last tangible part of Max off, this ill-fated thing that belonged to him, then passed to the police, then Juniper, now me. I look down at it, squeezing it tight and then draw my hand away from the water.

  I can’t do it. It’s a good knife. Maybe the nicest knife I’ve ever owned. Max’s beautiful souvenir. I put it in my jeans pocket.

  I take the boat in and drag it up onto the beach. I make my way up the path toward the commons, following the subtle tracks only someone familiar with the land would know. I emerge from the woods and into the openness of the abandoned arts camp. I do a loop around the commons, and as I do, I hear a quiet hum then rumble—an engine growing louder, and I know someone must be coming up the road. It’s a large, shiny, blue pickup truck. I hear Bob Dylan spilling out of the windows. I squint to see inside the glare-flaring windshield. Lance Peters gives me a smile and a wave from behind the wheel.

  I wave and smile back, happy to see him smiling again. I’ve helped Lance mourn the loss of his uncle, with whom he’d always had a difficult and conflicted relationship. I’ve let him talk through with me countless times how the accident could have happened, who might have been out there, why in the world Uncle Marc would have been wearing those gloves. We also talk about how uncanny it is that his girlfriend back in the day had died the same way. Lance will whistle in exasperation and declare that there are more things in heaven and earth, etcetera, etcetera. And by the end of it we always settle on the simple fact that it could have been anyone. I hold his hands and look into his eyes, and I let him know: it could be anyone at all.

  We’ve fallen back into things. Maybe even a proper relationship, you could say. We met in first grade, and there’s been nothing for it ever since, in one way or another. We’ve been bumping into each other and catching up since I got back here last May. A lunch here, a movie there, sex in his truck here and there and there. Then one night several months before Max died, we went to Thelma’s Landing, and we had some drinks, and some spigot inside me just opened to him. I ended up telling him what I had found out about my mom. I told him so much—almost everything. Everything about Max. And he didn’t get scared away when I dropped into conversation that I wouldn’t mind if Max Durant died.

  He didn’t bat an eye.

  And when I expressed that I wouldn’t mind doing it myself, he didn’t flinch. And when I said I had a plan, he said how can I help. We were in love by then, and he would have done anything for me. And I for him. But beyond feeling an allegiance to me because of our relationship, I could see that he understood that I had been mortally wronged and that all this was, all I really planned to do, was to set it right.

  “Hey, there, Evie.” He smiles as he pushes the door of the truck closed behind him. Evie. Evie. Eveline. Audra was only a temporary, necessary measure. For Max. For the institute. I’m just Evie Dunn to Lance. Always have been. And he wants me to change my name back, officially. I probably will, despite the Dunn baggage. I created some of my own to carry. It’s who I am. Audra Colfax served her purpose.

  “Hey, there, Lance.” I squint up at him.

  “Thought you might want some muscle to start.” He flexes for me in his old Greenville Lakers soccer tee. Still fits. Still fills it out quite nicely.

  “Would I ever.” We kiss, and he presses his hand tenderly to the side of my face.

  We ride down to the clearing on his two ATVs with an ax, a chainsaw, a hatchet, some rope, some chain, and a few other things. We park at the edge of the clearing. We stand before the boulder. We stand before the birch. Lance puts his arm around my shoulders. We look at the birch in silence for a good long while. Maybe Lance thinks I’m praying. And in a way, he’s right. I think about my strong, wiry, blond little mom. I think of her extraordinary, tenacious, unsettling talent. Her drawings. Her notes. Her small body in this tree draped in her favorite yellow dress. I think of suave, lithe, bespectacled Max. I think of his easy charisma in the classroom, the sparks of greatness in his paintings. I think of the rage and ego in him. I think of how desperately he wanted to be admired. I think of lumbering, brutish Marcus—cunning and calculating. A killer of women; one an “accident,” one a “suicide.” His smugness all these years as he tried to socialize with me through Lance. I think of everything these men—the Ms—have taken from me. I think of Max hanging in his smart peacoat. I think of Marcus bleeding out, face down in the dirt.

  I leave Lance’s gentle grasp and retrieve the ax from my ATV. I go to the birch and level a devastating hack into its papery-white side. I turn to look at Lance.

  “It’s time for it to come do
wn. And I want all of the roots up. All of them,” I tell him. I pull the ax from the tree. He nods and retrieves goggles, leather gloves, and the heavy-duty chain saw from his ATV. We are changing the history and the topography and the ecosystem of this land for the better. When he’s most of the way through and the tree tips, Lance pulls the saw and backs up, shouting for me to keep clear. The birch crashes down through the branches and leaves of a few other trees, smashing into low bushes and brambles as it hits the earth with an enormous, muted smack. It falls downslope toward the lake, like an arrow.

  ***

  We’ve been at it for about four hours, chopping and sawing off the limbs of the tree bit by bit, then chopping and sawing and stacking those into piles and bundles, then setting to cutting logs and discs from the trunk.

  Lance leaves to grab food for us, and I pause in the still air, the earth moist and radiating humidity. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. I mindlessly pull Max’s knife—my knife—from my pocket and flip it open and closed in one hand—snick, snick. I take a turn around the clearing, which seems so much bigger, so much brighter, so much lighter now. I look at the beautiful birch wood, a maddening proliferation. Now hundreds and hundreds of small, haunting birch trees. Mini gallows. I’m turning away from the black hole in the earth the tree once sat in when I see something. Something tucked into the space between the boulder and the freshly disturbed tangle of roots.

  Snick, snick. Snick.

  I turn back and squint, move myself closer to the hole. I get down on my hands and knees. There’s a small, sturdy, clear-plastic box, red—like a child’s jewelry box for a few bracelets or a collection of beads—pinging out of the blackness of the earth. The sudden red is a jolt, a cardinal flashing through trees, a fishing hook through the fingertip of a little girl.

  Mom.

  I stay looking at it for many good, long moments. I see that there is a folded piece of paper inside.

  Jesus, Coral.

  You are everywhere, Mom.

  How many times have I found such a note of hers, folded and tucked, hidden in such a way over the past several years? All over the Dunn land? Inside my home? All over Lupine Valley? But it has been months since this has happened. It’s almost too much to bear, to see her whispering at me from this earth, curling her finger at me to come closer. To look, one more time.

  I shiver in the mid-July heat. I pull it loose. I find the clasp. It feels sealed permanently shut at first, but then it gives, the top lid flying back, falling over on its hinge. I look at the folded piece of paper inside and consider not opening it. I run my thumb over the paper again and again, dirtying it, stuck in some subterranean trauma rhythm, and in the other hand, snick, snick.

  I open it up.

  A cardinal shock, a flash of violence.

  I only realize that the blade has sliced into my clenched fist when crimson dots the paper, my vision.

  I’ll tell Evie one day but Evie is so

  small

  of course Brady

  is not her father

  is not Evie’s father Evie doesn’t belong to him

  is not of him

  M

  of course

  Max Max Moss M Max Moss M

  that devil in King City in that cabin

  that devil put another devil in me

  in that cabin in King City

  made her a pretty little devil

  too

  the best thing he ever made

  the best thing I ever made too even if she is

  a

  devil

  like

  him.

  —March89. CD.

  A Conversation with the Author

  What inspired you to write Dark Things I Adore?

  Wisps of ideas occur to me every now and again, but more often than not, I am led to a story by voice. A voice provides entry into a rhythm, into a way of noticing the world, then eventually into the things that happen around that perspective—which the voice ultimately filters and translates. The voice I started with in the very first iteration of this story ended up being an art student traveling to their professor’s home on the Maine coast. This professor had a spouse who was an artist who needed rather grizzly inspiration for her works. And that’s how it all began. Obviously, the trajectory of the story changed quite a lot from there, but at the heart of it remained art and this rather morbid question of what it might take for some to create it.

  Some people need a regimented schedule to write (an hour a day, for example), while others are happy to write half of a novel in a single sitting. What does your writing process look like?

  Oh, how I wish to be a regimented writer! There’s something romantic about the idea to me, something very professional and noble. I have tried early alarms on cold, dark mornings; I have tried a promise of at least thirty minutes a day no matter what; I have tried sitting at a proper desk at which to compose. None of it is for me. Years of trial and error—and fighting my instincts—have shown me that I am and will only ever be what I refer to as a Tea Kettle Writer; I burble and heat and hum (thinking, ruminating, procrastinating), and then when it all boils to a sense of Must Write, I do just that—I write. On my couch. In my bed. Then I can go on day-long jags. But then there will be days and weeks (sometime months!) at a time where I don’t write or only write fanfiction.

  There are so many elements to this story—multiple perspectives, dual timelines, Coral’s art, Audra’s trap for Max. How did you keep them all straight? Is that something you mapped out before sitting down to write?

  To this point in my writing life, I have never outlined or mapped anything out story- or plot-wise before starting. And I say this not as some sort of brag but only to point out the fact that I have little to no foresight about what I’m about to do when I start! And with Dark Things I Adore, things got more complicated with each draft. In early drafts, there was only one timeline, there were fewer POVs, and certain scenes existed in different places in the timeline. As things evolved and deepened in dimension and complexity, I found that I absolutely had to start taking notes on the fly. I took down notes in marble notebooks and Google Docs, drew diagrams on an easel-sized pad of drawing paper, and eventually created a spreadsheet database to keep it all straight! My next book, which is under way, will have some outlining because the core plot concept has started to solidify. The idea came before the voice this time!

  Using Audra’s thesis—and art in general—as a narrative thread is an interesting choice. How did you come up with it? Do you have a background in fine arts?

  I’m a very middling visual artist, but I love art as a pure spectator and have immense respect for visual artists and what they can do. The painter Julie Beck is my current favorite. I think I was drawn to visual art in my storytelling in this book because there is something so physical, so tactile, so sensory about painting—the tools, the relationship of body to brush to paint to canvas, the magical-sounding color names—that it seemed to me a perfect medium to try to work with inside a novel. Everything about it feels very delicious and substantial and evocative. A fun challenge for a writer to do that ultimate thing: show, don’t tell.

  Audra rebels against the idea that she and Max are similar, though ultimately that proves to be true. When you started writing this book, is that how you imagined Audra’s story would end?

  No!

  Juniper, a character who witnesses abuse but remains silent, is a fascinating example of moral ambiguity. How did you tackle writing a sympathetic but flawed character?

  Ah, Juniper. Juniper has such an important function as a character, of course—to be the reader’s eyes and ears during a fraught and seminal time in the lives of a few of our main characters. I wanted Juniper to be able to convey what was happening without editorializing in a way that stunted the reader’s relationship to the complexities of what was unfolding.
Juniper is a portal. The reader gets to decide what to make of what they see through her. But as a person, Juniper, for me, feels almost painfully human, painfully familiar. For me, Juniper represents a kind of ongoing, internal Kitty Genovese phenomenon—the bystander effect. And it lasts the whole length of the book. Juniper reminds us that even when we’re by and large “good” people, it’s easy—scary easy—to watch suffering of various kinds and assume the problem is beyond us to solve. Or it’s not our place, not our business. That the bad-vibes prickle up our spines is a misfire, that we’re imagining trouble where there isn’t any. Or that rocking the boat might lose us friends. Juniper is that sore spot of regret and frailty we all have from time to time, in big ways and in small ways, when we say to ourselves: I should have said something. I should have done something. But we didn’t.

  What draws you to dark, psychological stories as a writer? As a reader?

  I’ve always been interested in things that are a little on the macabre end of the spectrum. As a kid, I remember watching Unsolved Mysteries and Are You Afraid of the Dark? and reading Goosebumps and Two-Minute Mysteries. I loved them. To this day I inhale podcasts like My Favorite Murder, The Last Podcast on the Left, Dr. Death, S-Town, and more. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and The Stranger Beside Me left me sleepless and triple-checking my door locks when I read them last year, but I kept on reading. Whether the stories are true crime or fiction, a person who embarks into any of these narratives goes in at the mercy of the inexplicable. I think that’s a big part of the draw. We read and dissect and listen and force ourselves to imagine in an effort to understand the un-understandable. The split-second trigger that results in a crime of passion. The long years of build to a calculated horror. The grit of survivors who escape someone else’s terrible plan for them. The bald, raw courage of loved ones left behind in the wake of a sudden and violent absence. How? We ask. Why? So we look to the evidence and materials around us and try to make sense of what’s there. I think it’s as expansive and mysterious as outer space, what goes on inside of any one person. I think that’s why psychological stories are so popular, and always will be.