Al at once the gentlemanly pace of his courting bothered me. Getting pregnant at fifteen had made me cautious about sex, but stil , a girl likes to be asked with a certain amount of fervor. I’m not saying he definitely was what my gut said he was; I’m saying in that single second of doubt I knew I wouldn’t gamble. Not if I had to ante up my kid. I sent Liza to pack towels and sunscreen and broke up with him, then and there. She and I went to the beach that day on our own.
I didn’t have that fal ing-for feeling again, not about anyone I dated before Liza ran away. Then came Lawrence, and long after Liza was home and he was back with Sandy he was the stick I measured every other man against. Lordy, but they al came up so short. I sat through bad dates remembering how he made me laugh, how easy we felt being quiet together, how safe he made me feel.
I didn’t remember the sex.
When Liza came home, I’d packed sex in a box and put it deep away, then stacked a thousand other boxes on top of it to wedge the lid on. I’d thrown myself whole into being what Mosey cal ed a mommishy mom, being nothing but a Big. But now? I’d done al those things with Lawrence in the sunshine spil ed across his bed, and sex had ripped its way up through al the boxes, leaving my insides in a wanton disarray. Now I couldn’t stop remembering.
This was my trouble year; every fifteen, like clockwork, God came after me. This was the worst one yet. The last thing I needed was sex rearing up, huge and alive and messy. It wasn’t a single rooted object, like a weed I could pul out and toss away either. It was a thick layer of wanting, padding every bone I had.
I’d pass my potted plant in the kitchen and remember the green smel of a potted plant in the kitchen at Lawrence’s old house, how I’d smel ed leaves once when he’d laid me out on the counter and put his mouth on me. A man with square hands and tidy nails came into the bank with his kid’s birthday checks, and I lost count of the cash three times, because Lawrence had hands shaped like that. I kept flashing to how hard those hands gripped mine when he was moving deep and slow in me, when we’d been face-to-face in his bed, eyes open, our gazes eating each other up. A scrap of familiar song, one we’d made love to, or that sounded like one we may have made love to once, long ago, was enough to stutter my feet and stop me in my tracks, bent a little at the waist, gut-punched and swamped with sudden, awful longing.
And the bastard didn’t cal me.
At home Mosey glared at me like she’d caught me eating kittens if I so much as asked how her day went, and she always had Raymond Knotwood or her new little friend over. She’d introduced her as Patti, no last name, but I’d lived in Immita long enough to know a Duckins when I saw one. Patti was so wan and lanky an object that my first thought was, Why, this child has a tapeworm. I liked her, though. She had a sweet smile, and she leaned hard into any casual pat I gave her like a touch-starved orphan. Lord only knew what her home life was like, but I reminded myself that Noveen Duckins had been a better friend to Liza than Melissa Richardson had, and Melissa was from the wealthiest family in town.
On Thursday, Rick Warfield came over to question Liza. She stared into space, so unresponsive she was practical y drooling. He got nothing, but having him in my den, leaning toward her, asking her question after question about those bones, made me a wreck. Then he asked to talk to Mosey, and I couldn’t see a way to stop him.
She came sulking in when I cal ed and sat in the chair opposite him, spine slumped, mouth turned down.
He started by saying, “You have a pretty good view of the woods from that tree house of yours, don’t you? Have you ever noticed anyone hanging out behind your house?” Maybe he was thinking whoever buried those bones might be sneaking back for visits.
“What, like a perv?” Mosey asked, deliberately obtuse.
“Anyone.”
Mosey shrugged, then said, “Once I saw Jack Olsen and Larry Dart out there, smoking pot.”
Warfield started. Larry Dart was his nephew. I could tel by the chal enging tilt of Mosey’s head that she knew it, too. He wrapped it up pretty quick then and left, distracted and probably heading for his sister’s house. I felt sick down deep in the pit of my stomach. I suspected that Mosey had made up the pot smoking, but I couldn’t tel . That was a first; Mosey usual y lied like a toddler, eyes too wide, toe scrubbing the dirt, chewing her bottom lip like it was bubble gum. The thought that she might’ve learned such a perfect poker face in this short span chil ed me to my marrows.
What else was this trouble year teaching her?
Day after day went by, Liza withdrawn, Mosey unreadable, the pool stal ed, the cops stil working this cold case, and me out of ideas.
Then I came home after the longest Tuesday in the history of time to find Liza’s room looking like storm clouds had formed near the ceiling and rained down a thousand glossy photographs. She’d dragged every one of the bins out from under her bed, and then she’d tumped them over and scrabbled and tossed and flung pictures in al directions. Now she sat flat on her bottom in the middle of a sea of photos. The bins themselves were lying empty, on their sides and upside down like capsized boats. The photos were mostly face-up, scattered in heaps and drifts. It was such a jumble that I found myself looking helplessly from picture to picture: a cicada husk on bright grass, a stack of red checkers, a single neon rain boot abandoned in a puddle.
I was stil in my bank clothes, my eyes grainy with tired from the long day of recounting greasy cash. Al I wanted was to throw a frozen lasagna in the oven and pour myself an enormous glass of wine to dul my insides, but I was looking at a good two hours on my knees instead. I’d have to restack al those scattered photos, or they’d never fit back in the boxes. Liza smiled up at me, so pleased with herself she was practical y alight.
Bogo peered out from behind her. The little wretch had visible rays of twitchy guilt shooting out his ears, and his worry-soaked face said, plain as if he spoke English, that he’d hidden a turd or two somewhere in the mess.
“Big, come,” Liza said, like I was her dog, too, beckoning at me with her good arm.
I held up a “wait a sec” finger and turned away, hol ering, “Mosey Wil ow Jane Grace Slocumb!” in a dire tone that would have brought her to me on the run a month ago. Today she and Raymond Knotwood and Patti were in the den, playing Texas hold ’em for Skittles, and I got no response.
I yel ed her whole name again, my voice rising so ful of temper it cracked in the middle. After another thirty seconds, she came sauntering down the hal , speaking in this overdramatic theatrical whisper. “Big! I have friends here.”
“Have you checked on your mom at al ?” I asked.
Mosey came even with me, and her eyes widened when she saw the room. “Wow! Lookit that!”
“I am looking. When you send Mrs. Lynch home, you are supposed to be taking care of Liza.”
“She was lying down.” Mosey spoke in a defensive, aggrieved whine that she’d invented when she’d entered adolescence. It used to be she only used that voice on Liza. These days she whispered sweet in Liza’s ear and saved that tone for me.
I said, “We al have to pitch in here. If you can’t take care of your mom and have your friends over, guess which one of these things we’l stop doing?”
Mosey puffed herself ful of air like a mad toad. “Wel , I’m not the one who let Liza escape and go running down the road.”
I looked back over my shoulder at Liza, impatiently sitting in her stew of photos. She waved me in again and repeated, “Big! Come!”
I said, “Sec, baby,” then stepped out of the doorway, pul ing Mosey a step down the hal with me. “I am one breath from grounding you. I did not let her esca—”
“I meant Mrs. Lynch,” Mosey said, eyes rol ing. “God.”
That derailed my lecture, al right. “Wait, Liza left the house again?”
“Yah. Today. We saw her when we were driving home from school. She was halfway to Woodland Street.”
That paused me. Liza had been heading in that direction, toward Woodland, the time she esc
aped on my watch, too. “Why didn’t you tel me?”
“You just got home. But, Big, I think it’s happened more than once,” Mosey said. She leaned toward me, and suddenly we were on the same team. It had been a while. We’d been at odds every second since the day I let Tyler Baines take the wil ow out. Now I so wished I’d listened to Mosey and let that tree alone. I should have fenced the front yard and plopped a pool down out there. “When we brought Liza in, Mrs. Lynch was asleep in front of the TV, and she woke up al snorty and blamey. She was like, ‘I can’t help it your mom’s so tricky. I can’t hardly turn my back or have a pee without her heading out the front door.’ It sounded to me like Liza’s done it a bunch and she didn’t tel us.”
“That woman…” I said. We were sure getting what we paid for with our three-dol ar-an-hour sitter.
“I know, right?” Mosey said. “Total B-word.”
“I’l talk to her tomorrow morning.” I paused there, not wanting to break the moment.
She did, though. She dropped her eyes, as if she were uncomfortable agreeing with me on anything, even this. “Is that al ? We’re in the middle of a hand.” She’d quit my team as fast as she’d joined it. She didn’t wait for my nod either, before she turned and trotted off back to her friends.
I stepped back to Liza’s room, and when I reappeared in the doorway, Bogo let out a startled yip. He ducked behind Liza.
“Oh, stop it,” I told him, but in a soft voice. The sil y animal twitched and shivered if I spoke in anything above a gentle coo, but I had to admit he did love him some Liza. The way he pressed against her, the way she worked to move her bad arm to give him a reassuring touch, that made me fond of the ratty object in spite of myself. She hadn’t been able to pat him like that when he first came.
Her room was a wreck, but cleaning would have to wait. I wanted to put my feet up and drink enough wine to stop thinking about al the sex with Lawrence that I damn-it-al wasn’t having, and I needed to get Mosey alone and try to bust through the coldness that was threatening to make a permanent home between us, but those things had to wait, too. Liza was acting with purpose, like she had at Sandy’s house and again at Lawrence’s apartment. The walks toward Woodland, getting out al the pictures—this was Liza trying to surface and tel me something.
I squatted down beside her and asked, “Where are you trying to lead me?”
Instead of answering she thrust a slim stack of photos at me, clutched hard in her good hand. I cleared a place by her and sat on the floor, then took the stack and flipped through: A teacup. A shot glass sitting on an orange barstool at The Crow. A wineglass ful of milk. A coffee mug. I stopped looking and said to her, “I know. Cup.”
“Cup!” Liza repeated, almost a crow of relief. “Cup! Cup!”
I set the pictures down and laid a soothing hand on her arm. “I know you want to tel me something about cups. What about the cup?”
She was already pul ing another stack of pictures out from under her good leg. I shifted through them: A brightly colored tree frog. An abandoned snake skin in the dunes. A pirate’s eye patch with a skul and crossbones on it from one of Mosey’s old Hal oween costumes. A spray of pale flowers. Lastly a picture of the back of Liza’s own hand, her nails painted with a clear gloss, which was unusual. She’d always kept her feet pumiced and painted her toes in summer colors, but she never gave herself a manicure. In this shot her hand was tilted toward the camera, like she wanted the lens to admire the ring she was wearing, even though it was broken; the blue gem was tipped up on its side, half out of the setting.
“These pictures, they mean a word?” I said, puzzled.
She swatted at the photos in my hand, impatient. “Cup,” she said.
I looked through again. Frog cup. Plant cup. Pirate eye patch Hal oween cup. They didn’t tel me anything.
“Big?” Mosey said in the doorway. “Can Patti stay for eats?”
I looked up, distracted. “I don’t know. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier.” But that wasn’t exactly a firm no. I’d never had trouble tel ing Raymond Knotwood to go to his cozy house and eat his own mother’s supper, but when Patti stood in her ratty hand-me-downs, snuffing the air like baked-potato soup or my meat loaf was French perfume, I had an almost primal urge to feed her. Stil , I worried about sending her off afterward on her rickety bicycle, heading al the way out to Ducktown after sundown. She wouldn’t take a ride.
Mosey wanted it bad enough to wheedle me. “Wel , if Roger stayed, too, he could drive her.…”
“Mosey, I am doing something here.”
“Not cleaning up,” Mosey said, eyeing the chaos. “Please can they stay?” She lowered her voice and added, “I think Patti’s real y hungry.”
That registered with me. I said, “It’s just Stouffer’s and a salad.”
Mosey grinned. She knew that meant yes. She was happy with me for this one second, so I took advantage of it.
“While I’ve got you, turn the hal light on and help me with this right quick.” I brought Liza’s stack of pictures out into the hal and laid them out in a row on the floor. “Look at these. Can you see how they might go together?”
“What do you mean? Did Liza pick these out?” I nodded, and she knelt down to see, intrigued. “Why is Liza picking out pictures?”
I thought up a lie so fast I felt like the Grinch tricking Cindy Lou Who out of Christmas. “It’s a new kind of therapy for stroke victims who’ve lost speech.” Mosey was beetling her brows at me suspiciously, and I said, “Wel , who knows when we’l get the pool done? I’ve been asking Google for alternate treatments on my lunch hour. I saw this on the YouTube today.”
“It’s not the YouTube, it’s just— Never mind. I wonder if the order matters,” Mosey said, touching the frog with one finger. “Frog…maybe that’s the subject? Like a sentence diagram or something?” She raised her voice so suddenly I jumped, and Bogo, who had come to the doorway to see what we were doing, skittered backward and disappeared. “Roger! C’mere!” She sounded like Liza, demanding, Big, come. So exactly like that I couldn’t help smiling; she was ours, no matter what her genes might say. She went on, talking softer to me. “Roger is supremely awesome at any kind of puzzle.”
Raymond Knotwood came down the hal with Patti fol owing hesitantly behind, like she wasn’t sure if she was wanted.
“Lookit,” Mosey said. “Big says these mean something. Liza picked them out.” I glanced into the room to check on Liza. She sat flat on her butt, quiet, good hand soothing the ratty dog.
“Hi, Big,” Patti said. She’d picked up Mosey’s name for me.
“Dude!” Raymond Knotwood said, dropping to his knees, his oversize eyes going even wider with interest. “Like a secret message?”
“No,” I said, instantly and a hair too loud. I forced a smile and tried to sound casual. “She’s supposed to pick out pictures that relate in some way.
It’s to help her brain. But I can’t see how these have anything to do with one another.”
“Oh, wel , that’s cool, too,” Raymond said. Patti drifted past him, coming to stand by me. Raymond dealt the photos back out in a row, like he was laying down a hand of solitaire. “Oh, man! A Machiavel i ring!” He touched the picture of Liza’s hand.
“A what?” I asked.
“Mom never paints her nails,” Mosey said, crowding closer.
“That’s what struck me, too, but what’s a Machiavel i ring?”
Raymond Knotwood said, “See how the gem is tipped up? There’s a secret compartment under it. Like, the Medicis and al those murdery people in the Renaissance would put poison in there, and then they’d flip it open and dump it al casual into someone’s wine. Like at court.”
“Secret compartment. I don’t see another picture that could mean a secret place, though,” I said. I looked back at Liza, sitting on the floor with Bogo in her lap now. She didn’t react, but maybe she hadn’t heard me?
Mosey’s cheeks washed a faint pink. “Why would Mom be showing you pict
ures about having a secret place? She doesn’t have a secret place.”
I said, soothing, “I’m sure she’s not saying that at al .” It was a mistake to ask for help. What if we did figure out Liza’s message and it wasn’t something I could pass off as therapy?
Raymond was looking at Mosey with his head cocked, making a thinking face. He saw me watching him watch Mosey, and he flushed and turned his attention back to the pictures. He rearranged the order, twice, and then he tapped the photo of the ring and chuckled.
“Got it.” He shot a show-off’s grin to Mosey, peacocking his big brain like tail feathers. “In the ring pic, it’s not nail polish or the secret compartment that matters. See this frog? It’s poison frogs that are jewel-colored, so birds know not to eat them. I saw it on Discovery Channel.
Snake skin, snake, poison, that’s obvious, right? And this”—he waved the eye patch photo—“forget pirates. It’s the skul and crossbones. They put that on cleaning products so people who can’t read don’t drink bleach.” He was so proud he was vibrating, and Mosey rewarded him with an admiring smile. He held up the picture of the tiny flowers. “I don’t know what these flowers are, but I’d bet they are toxic enough to flat kil you.”
“Naw,” said Patti softly.
“You know this plant?” Raymond said. “Are you sure it won’t kil you? Because everything else here wil .”
Patti’s eyes were bright beneath her shaggy bangs, and it was sweet to see how pleased she was to be helping. I gave her nearby calf an encouraging squeeze, and she flushed red and said, triumphantly, “You won’t die or nothing, but you sure dun wanna get in it. That’s the flower part of… poison ivy.”
“Shazam!” Raymond Knotwood said. He reared up for a high five with Mosey. “Poison. These pictures al show poison.”
He’d said it loud, and Liza banged the floor with her hand, cal ing, “Yes, yes, yes!” Bogo barked along with her pounding.
A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty Page 22
