After the Woods

by Kim Savage

  “What happened in the woods is over,” I say, for Liv, even if I don’t believe it for a second, because it’s what Liv wants to hear, and she needs me on her side, having to deal every day with this big bag of crazy.

  Liv smiles weakly. “Exactly.”

  Deborah tears open a box with a flaxen-haired girl on the front and expertly combines the contents of the two plastic bottles. The ammonia smell is acrid and instantaneous, and it singes my nostrils. I hold my breath.

  “So, I’ll see you at school tomorrow. Stay well, okay?” Liv says, then turns to Deborah. “Julia got sick in gym.”

  Deborah raises an eyebrow as she peels thin clear gloves from a sheet of directions, the tearing sound a perfunctory note of dismissal.

  “Right.” I glance back to say “You stay well, too,” but Deborah already has her hand on the back of Liv’s neck, drawing perfect rows of poison down her scalp.

  * * *

  I’ve been rinsing the salad greens for minutes before I notice they’re wilting. The oven timer is buzzing, which means the chicken is nice and crispy, but I ignore that, too. I was determined to have dinner ready by the time Mom changed out of her wet clothes, a little dig for being later than she said she’d be, on a rainy night when she should have known I wouldn’t want to be alone, because I despise rain nearly as much as trees, the cold, and sociopaths. But then I got to thinking about Liv’s perverse interest in Shane, and the body, and whether what happened in the woods is really over, and suddenly the mesclun was mush.

  And the phone’s been flashing. Voice mail can wait, because surely it’s Ricker, the only person who calls the house phone, asking how does the news of a body in the woods make me feel, exactly? Also, what were my thoughts before collapsing in gym? I wrinkle my nose at the phone and reposition the remaining grocery bags, so Mom will see them when she hustles downstairs and act sheepish because her work is creeping right back in where it was before the woods, to that place that comes before me.

  Blink after spastic blink. “Easy, Ricker,” I murmur, wiping my hands on my jeans. Raindrops thrum the skylight over my head. I glance up warily as I cross the room to the phone and press Play.

  “This is Paula Papademetriou calling for Julia Spunk.” The voice is husky and confidential.

  I run from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs and look up. A crack of light glows under Mom’s bedroom door.

  “I’d like to talk with you about the recent developments in the Middlesex Fells Reservation,” she says, and then she leaves her personal cell phone number.

  I tear back to the kitchen and scan the counter. The glazed clay fish I made in fifth grade to hold pencils contains only lead dust. Mom’s door squeaks open; her feet thump down the stairs, quick, like a child’s. I grab a box of aluminum foil off the counter, tear off a sheet, and lay it flat, using my fingernail to scrape digits into the silver as she enters the kitchen.

  “Honey, the timer,” she says.

  I hunch my shoulders, fold the foil into a triangle, and drop it into the fish’s mouth. “Give it five more minutes.”

  “Is everything all right?” she asks me.

  I catch her gazing into the sink at the colander of green mush. “The mesclun was dirty. Gritty dirty.” I rush to the stove and bang at the timer, avoiding her eyes. I’m acting crazy, speaking way too fast, but I can’t slow down. “Better safe than sorry. Did you know a woman found a black widow spider in a bunch of supermarket grapes?”

  Mom unlatches her silver bead necklace and sets it on the granite counter with a pretty click. “Can’t say that I did.” She meets me at the stove and pushes my hair behind my ear, frowning. “How are you handling the awful news?”

  “News?”

  “About that poor girl.”

  “Oh that. I don’t know. Aren’t I supposed to wait for Elaine Ricker to tell me how to handle it?”

  “Chilly night.” She turns away and rubs opposite arms, heading for the sink. “We can talk about it later. If you want to. Or not.” She covers the lettuce with a paper towel and pats it carefully. “Who called?”

  “Oh, the voice mail? That was a reporter.” I hold my breath.

  “Leaving their personal number? Pushy.”

  She heard more than I thought. “It’s just the same old,” I say.

  “If only it were. Dr. Ricker warned me that this new discovery in the woods would rekindle the media’s interest in you. I didn’t want to do this during Girls’ Night, but that call makes it clear: we need to talk about how we’ll manage intrusions into our privacy.”

  As if having reporters crouching in the bushes outside our house last fall, or setting blankets next to ours on the Tanglewood lawn last summer, was manageable. That’s the special talent of Gwen Spunk, biomedical engineer. MacArthur Genius Award winner at the tender age of thirty-five. Survivor of Having Your Child Abducted. Other moms pop Valium. Mine strategizes.

  “Dr. Ricker advises a no-tolerance policy when it comes to the media,” she says. “I agree.”

  “She mentioned that. I don’t see how local news reporters are the enemy. In fact, to hear Paula Papademetriou tell it, the police are the ones who screwed up by not watching Donald Jessup in the first place.”

  “Dealing with reporters isn’t useful to your healing. In fact, quite the opposite.”

  I consider pointing out that spending hours alone after school during torrential downpours is not useful to my healing. Instead, I grunt.

  She sticks her index fingers into the ends of her eyes and stretches them into slits. “By the way, which reporter was it?”

  “Ryan Lombardi,” I lie, tossing out a name less likely to ping Mom’s radar, since Paula was way aggressive last time around.

  “Is Ryan a woman?”

  “Ryan is a man.”

  “That’s odd. I thought I heard a woman’s voice.”

  “Nope.”

  “Male or female, we aren’t letting a reporter ruin Girls’ Night,” she says.

  Every night is Girls’ Night. From a medical perspective, Erik Meijer is my father, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. I’m not even supposed to know Erik was Mom’s sperm donor, but I figured it out around age ten, and since then it’s been a silent understanding among the three of us, along the lines of Santa Claus. I know the truth, Mom and Erik get that I know the truth, but talking about it would spoil the magic. My discovery is based on our identical looks (Erik is half-Japanese and half-Dutch, which for us translates into being tall, with blue almond-shaped eyes, oval faces, and pale skin, for me, with a dusting of freckles), and, more directly, the legal paperwork Mom keeps on the family desktop outlining said sperm donor’s parental rights (none). Keeping my knowledge on the down-low saves me from taking a stand if vague tensions erupt, as they inevitably do, when Mom feels Erik is overstepping. Despite all this unspoken weirdness, Erik’s always been devoted to Mom, especially when she didn’t get tenure, and apparently that’s some kind of learn-who-your-real-friends-are moment. It’s mutual, because when Erik was being wooed away from her lab by the big Ivy across the Charles River, Mom was beside herself until he rejected their offer.

  How she resists an übersmart, ridiculously fit hottie who’s devoted to her and gave her his guys to produce a fabulous kid like me is another question entirely.

  Mom circles behind me and reaches up to give my shoulders a gentle squeeze. “What’s in the oven? It smells like chicken.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Really lovely, Julia.”

  I should admit it’s precooked supermarket rotisserie chicken, but she’s already yelling into the fridge. “Thanks for getting dinner going! The rain had traffic at a standstill! Did you know the Aberjona overflowed and they closed Main Street?”

  “I notice rain, yes,” I say.

  She produces a bruised onion triumphantly. “This should perk up the salad.”

  I take the onion and set to work at the cutting board. The knife gets stuck in the mealy layers. “I don’t care that y
ou were late,” I lie. It’s a fine line, wanting Mom around, but not wanting Mom around as much as in the Berkshires.

  “I care.” She cups her hand over mine. “I’ll slice. You finish the salad.”

  I drop the knife and move to the sink. Mom chatters about a dating epidemic among her latest crop of postdocs while I squint through the window. Somewhere in that purple darkness is an improbably gorgeous, rolling grass lawn. We are the last people in the world who should have a backyard, given that Mom spends most of her life under artificial light and I’m afraid of trees in any number. Yet there’s our backyard, a rarity in Shiverton, where grand colonials and Victorians are wedged into lots the size of postage stamps. We even have a deck and Adirondack chairs, price tags still tied to the legs.

  The knife slices, onion to wood, chop, chop, chop, a solid noise that I should like, but it flicks at my belly.

  “Truth be told, I had a difficult day,” Mom says. “The rhythm gets lost when the lab director goes on sabbatical. Grievances take root among the more difficult personalities. And obviously I feel guilty about being late for dinner again. Perhaps it’s not the best night to strategize. I’m not thinking clearly.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to call her back,” I say.

  The knife hangs in the air. “Her?” she says.

  “Him. I meant him.”

  Mom smiles tightly at the board and starts a vigorous hand-over-hand chop. “The Berkshires are looking better every minute.” She catches my alarm at my slip and misinterprets it. “Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere.”

  I manage a fake laugh. “Speaking of difficult personalities, I saw Mrs. Lapin today. She hasn’t changed.”

  “Still hard on Liv?”

  “You could say that. Actually, she’s worried the reporters are going to start up again, too. Because, you know, they might catch her off guard, when her hair isn’t perfect. Or Liv’s hair isn’t perfect. That would be worse, I think.”

  Mom grimaces, slipping on quilted mitts and pulling the chicken from the oven. Its taut skin crackles. The smell fills the kitchen, and I know it’s heavenly, and that I should feel hunger, but there’s nothing.

  “We all have different coping mechanisms,” Mom says.

  “Deborah is a narcissist so obsessed with her daughter’s shiny image that Liv isn’t allowed to cope.” I rinse the cutting board and wash the knife. “She barely gives Liv room to breathe. Now Liv’s seeing Shane Cuthbert, which is wrong on so many levels.”

  “Liv was always a bit fickle. Maybe her tastes have changed.”

  “Shane tastes like rancid meat, trust me. Or like pot. A pot-burger,” I say.

  “I remember him as a handsome kid. Friendships evolve, Julia. Maybe you’re reacting to the fact that the Liv you’ve returned to junior year isn’t the same Liv.”

  “Friendships evolve?”

  “What Liv went through was horrific, but it wasn’t half of what you experienced. Maybe she truly is okay. And you’ve just outgrown each other. I know that’s hard to accept.”

  I throw the knife into the sink with a clatter. “We’ve outgrown each other?”

  Mom’s shoulders freeze. She searches for a spot to rest the pan, but the counter is cluttered with paper bags, and the table is ten steps away. She’s trapped, and she has to listen to me. Because the black thing is here in the kitchen with us.

  “I mean, you have an inquisitive mind. A really, really good mind. And sometimes we look for answers that aren’t actually there because we don’t want to face the reality that things have changed,” Mom says.

  “That’s a load of bullshit.”

  “Don’t be crude.” Her mitts tighten on the sides of the pan, and the fat underneath the chicken lists. “This is getting heavy.”

  “Something’s off with Liv,” I insist. “You don’t refuse to talk about an experience, however awful, with the only other person in the world who understands what it was like to go through it. Nor do you start dating a half Orc. Suggesting that Liv has outgrown her friendship with me is your not-so-subtle way of implanting the idea in my head because you don’t want me to hang around with her.”

  Mom grips the edges of the pan. “That’s untrue.”

  “You probably feel like what happened to that girl Ana shows how dangerous it was to save Liv. Like it proves some lesson,” I say.

  “How could you ever say such a thing? I’m not a monster!” she says.

  “You never liked Liv. I did the right thing by saving her, but you hate her so much you couldn’t even be proud of me.”

  “You think you did the right thing.”

  “I know I did!” I step forward and Mom jumps. The pan tips and fat splashes across her left arm. She cries out. I cover my hands with a kitchen rag and grab the pan, and she bolts to the sink, wrenching on the cold-water valve. The smell of burned flesh and butter fills the kitchen.

  “Mom?”

  Pain twists her mouth. She looks away.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say softly.

  She shuts off the water and inspects the mark, blazing pink. I set the pan on the table and spread paper towels on a spray of fat congealing on the tile. She blows at the burn while digging one-handedly in the junk drawer for wound salve. When she finally climbs onto the leather counter stool, arm slathered in goo, I hold my breath, waiting for her to say something bouncy, like “At least I’m a righty!” or “If you didn’t want chicken, you should have said so!”

  She blows on her arm. This time, her eyes are closed. Outside, wind chimes tinkle helplessly in the bluster.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m always proud of you.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t hate Liv. But sometimes I do think there are better friends for you. Remember Alice next door? Whatever happened to Alice Mincus?”

  “Mom,” I whisper. “I haven’t hung around with Alice since fifth grade.”

  Her eyes open and settle on me, the fine skin underneath newly crosshatched and gray. “A mother wants the best for her daughter. That is all. Can we just be quiet for a few minutes?”

  Deborah wanted things for Liv, too. Different things. The pageant career she blew when she had Liv, for one. Living in the Northeast stunted that, since pageant culture is more foreign to New England than sweet tea and hush puppies. Then there was the virtuous persona that Liv resisted. When we were thirteen, Liv got the idea to meet this guy she liked and ride the T into Boston to see a free concert. His name was Stevie Something, and he was seventeen. Which doesn’t seem old now, until I think about a guy around my age dating a thirteen-year-old. Liv told Deborah she was going to my house, and I told Mom the reverse, and we took a bus to Parlee, the next town over. We met Stevie Jerkface and a friend, Nameiforget, who was supposed to be my “date” except that I don’t think he was expecting a flat-chested child. Stevie Jerkface was drunk or high, and Liv giggled nonstop while we waited on the platform. Once we got on the train, the Jerky twins shared nips that smelled like pinecones. I refused, got called a word I’d never heard, and we were abandoned at the next stop—Savin Hill, or as the locals call it, Stab ’n’ Kill. At which point a large homeless woman in a dress boarded the train and wandered around the car. When she bent over, we saw she wasn’t wearing underwear. And that she’d been using newspapers as toilet paper, because they were still stuck there. I vomited in my mouth. Liv buried her face in my sternum. The story ended when we begged a T cop to ride the train home with us to Parlee and called Mom, throwing ourselves at her mercy.

  So when Mom suggests Liv is a questionable influence, I can’t deny it. But together we have history. An undeniably funny history.

  Mom slides off the stool and digs through her bag for Advil, twisting the cap with her teeth and knocking back two. “I think it’s important that we see Dr. Ricker together. Sort through all your questions. She thinks your obsession with the case is getting in the way of your progress.”

  “Actually, Dr. Ricker is on board with my approach. She ev
en wants to hypnotize me to regain my lost memories.”

  Mom looks sideways at me.

  “It’s either that, or play with dolls,” I add.

  “That sounds a bit … regressive.”

  “Regressive would be hanging around with my friend from elementary school.”

  “Alice has always been good to you,” Mom protests.

  “I believe you mean good for you.”

  Mom pops a third Advil. I wish she would laugh.

  “Let’s talk about Deborah again. She’s beside herself about the girl in the woods,” I say. “To the extent that she could have been her mother. That would have been upsetting.”

  Mom chokes. I slap her back, fearing I might break every fine bone through her shirt. She waves me away. I pour her a glass of water and continue. “Also, the news will take away from her Catholic Woman of the Year announcement, which is clearly a competing local news item. I don’t know how WFYT is going to decide which to cover.”

  “Try to cut Deborah Lapin some slack, please,” Mom rasps as she pads across the kitchen and eases a glass from the hanging wine rack. “You’re not being respectful.”

  I serve the meal that neither of us wants, tonging soggy salad onto our plates. The suction sound of Mom opening the wine fridge is the tearing off of a figurative bandage: a natural marker for a scene change.

  So I go there.

  “What happens if the woman in the woods has some connection to Donald Jessup?” I ask.

  “Then the police will find that out. And hopefully, her family will have some closure,” Mom says, filling her glass to the top with pale wine. “But that’s not a story you have to follow. It doesn’t have import for you.”

  “Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think? Criticizing me, given you’re someone who spends your whole life questing for knowledge.”