by Laura McHugh
“I always got the feeling that your dad didn’t like me hanging around, didn’t like your granddad paying so much attention to me. Then one day Dr. Arrowood told me I wouldn’t be working for him anymore. Eddie’s car had been crashed the night before, and he’d told his dad I was the one who did it. I had copies of all their keys, because I would take the cars in to the shop whenever they needed oil changes or new tires or what have you. I could tell your granddad didn’t really believe I had done it, but he felt he had to side with his son. That was that. To his credit, he never told anybody about it, never asked me to pay to fix the car. I think he felt bad about the whole thing.
“Then ten years back, when the first caretaker retired, I was working maintenance at the nursing home where my dad lived, and I got a call about the job here at Arrowood. That was right before your granddad passed. I like to think he had something to do with me getting the job, making things right.”
“I’m glad it worked out,” I said. “Sorry about what happened with my dad, though.”
He shrugged. “He never appreciated what he had, how much his parents did for him. He didn’t appreciate your mother, either, in my opinion. She deserved better than him.”
“How well did you know my mom?”
“She never talked about me?”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, not wanting to answer. Heaney stared at his shoes, the skin on his broad forehead turning pink in the awkward silence.
“We dated awhile, starting back when she was in high school.”
I did my best to maintain a neutral expression. I couldn’t picture my mother with Heaney. When I had mentioned his name on the phone, she’d acted like she didn’t even remember him. I wondered if he was telling the truth.
“We stayed friends. I tried to warn her about Eddie when she started seeing him. He had a reputation for messing around, and everybody knew it. Your mother made up her own mind, though, and she usually got what she wanted. She’d get that stubborn look on her face, same one you had the day you moved in here, when you wouldn’t let me carry your things.”
So that was the resemblance he’d seen between me and my mother. Nothing more than a stubborn expression.
Heaney shook his head and whistled through his teeth. “Enough about that, huh? I have an idea.” He got up from the steps and tucked his gloves under his arm. “I’m gonna play hooky the rest of this beautiful day and take my boat out to Little Belle Isle. Why don’t you come fishing with me?”
“I can’t today,” I said, though that wasn’t completely true. Ben wouldn’t be picking me up for the pumpkin festival until dark.
“Come on, you sure? It’d do you good to get out of the house. You ever been out on the islands?”
I shook my head. I’d seen Little Belle and Grand Belle when we’d sped past them in the Ruby Slipper. They had always looked odd to me, forested outposts in the middle of the river, little cabins up on stilts to avoid the spring floods.
“I’ve got a place out there, perfect for a bonfire and fish fry this time of year.”
I tried to picture the two of us sitting around the fire together and couldn’t quite make the pieces fit. Were we supposed to be friends? Employer and employee? Was he trying to forge a relationship of some sort between us, or did he simply pity me, that I was alone? And why did he say that it would do me good to get out of the house? Did he know, somehow, that I hadn’t left in days?
“Maybe next time,” I said, not meaning it.
“All right.” Heaney squinted down at me. “Next time, then. I’ll hold you to it.”
As soon as I closed the door behind me, I realized I’d left the trowels out on the porch. I popped back out to retrieve them, just in time to see Mrs. Ferris hurrying away from the carriage house. She cast a fleeting glance in my direction and then turned back toward her house as though she hadn’t seen me.
CHAPTER 12
* * *
Ben arrived to pick me up as darkness fell. He had promised to help out a friend with the jack-o’-lantern auction fundraiser, though that wasn’t until later in the night. He was going to serve as the auctioneer. I wondered if the friend was Courtney, the girl Lauren had mentioned, whom Ben still hadn’t told me about. We parked on Main and walked down to the riverfront. The street was lined with hundreds of flickering jack-o’-lanterns, and the moon loomed over the water, the color of bone.
I hadn’t been to the pumpkin festival since I was ten, when Grammy drove to Illinois to bring me back for a long weekend visit. I had worn the Halloween costume she’d made for me that year: Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, with long underwear underneath to keep me warm. My ruby slippers were old rain boots she had painted red and dusted with glitter. Grammy let me march in the costume parade with Ben and Lauren, though she’d followed right behind, not comfortable letting me out of her sight. I had wanted to ride the Himalayan, a mini-coaster with sparkly snowcapped mountains painted on the side, but I wasn’t tall enough. Instead, I was stuck riding the merry-go-round and the kiddie train with Lauren and the other little kids, though I secretly enjoyed it. Later, Grammy allowed me to go into the House of Mirrors with Ben, after making him promise he would not let go of my hand.
“I’ve missed this,” I said to Ben as we walked down the crowded midway. He smiled and linked his arm with mine as we approached the ticket booth. Ghosts roamed through the crowd on stilts, their white sheets rippling in the breeze. Halloween was always my favorite holiday, but I hadn’t done anything to celebrate it in years. I couldn’t remember the last time I had put on a costume or carved a jack-o’-lantern.
“Do you think any kids will come to my door to trick-or-treat?” I asked. “Or do they avoid Arrowood like we used to skip the Stone House down the street?” In the 1920s, the owner of the Stone House had shot his wife as she fled down the staircase, and then hanged himself in the attic. His wife bled to death at the foot of the stairs, and despite repeated attempts to remove the bloodstain, including sanding down and refinishing the floorboards and then finally replacing them altogether, the stain always reappeared. Oddly, as kids, that was not what scared us the most. To reach the door of the Stone House, you had to walk beneath an arch of pointed stones that resembled a mouth full of fangs. I’d never been brave enough.
“Kids aren’t scared of the Stone House anymore,” Ben said, handing a twenty to the lady in the ticket booth in exchange for a strip of tickets. “The new owners give out full-size candy bars. I bet the same trick would work for you.”
The air smelled of fry grease and cotton candy and funnel cakes dusted with powdered sugar. I glanced around at the rides, hoping to see the Himalayan, knowing, of course, that there were probably no more Himalayans in existence, and that even if I found one, it wouldn’t be as glittery and enticing as my memory claimed. We passed a carousel, colorful blinking lights distracting our eyes from rickety gears and cheap fiberglass animals, and I was glad not to see the run-down carnival in daylight. Darkness was kind, cloaking disappointing truths in mystery.
“We are totally riding the Scrambler,” Ben said, pulling me into the line.
“Don’t you hear that noise it’s making? It’s probably going to fall apart any minute now.”
“Come on,” he said. “You need to loosen up. Be a little bit more adventurous.”
“Fine,” I said. “But you’ll be sorry if I puke on you.”
I screamed for the entire two minutes the Scrambler spun us around. Centrifugal force pressed us together, and I buried my face against Ben’s leather jacket until it was over.
“Did we really used to enjoy that?” I asked as he helped me down.
“Yeah, we did. We used to get wristbands at the county fair so we could ride all day, remember?”
“I think I’m too old to have my brain sloshing around in my skull like that anymore.”
“Well, we’ve got a bunch of tickets to use up, so let’s rest your brain for a minute and then get back to it.”
“Can we sit for a se
c?”
“Sure.”
We walked over to a bench facing the river and sat down, the cool night air soothing my nausea. Behind us, there was carnival music and laughter and the screech of machinery, but the river, as always, was silent, keeping all its secrets to itself.
I could feel Ben watching me, and I turned to look up at him. “Better?” he asked.
I wanted to tell him that I was not better, though it helped, having him here. He had loved me, once, and I remembered how he had looked at me back then, the heat that had kindled in my chest like a fever. A long-dormant tide swept over me, and I imagined my old self flickering to life in the shell of my body, warming my bones, flushing my skin from the inside out. Neither of us looked away.
“I think we have time for one more thing before the auction,” he said. I watched his lips as he spoke, and I held still, waiting, willing him to angle closer, press his mouth against mine. He didn’t. “You’re not too old and feeble for the House of Mirrors, are you?”
“I think I can handle it.”
We made our way back into the crowd. The House of Mirrors looked the same as I remembered it, though it wasn’t likely the same one after all these years. Come morning, the whole thing would be folded up neatly onto a flatbed truck, but in the dark, with Halloween approaching, it evoked a tinge of nostalgic childhood fear. Ben handed over our tickets, and we slipped through the black canvas curtains.
Inside, the passageways were lit with dull, failing bulbs, the floor gummed with spilled soda and who knew what else. Music was piped in, a tense, tinny melody like the kind that played as you twisted the handle of a jack-in-the-box. Ben moved on ahead of me, barely pausing to look in the mirrors, but I took my time. I watched my reflection morph into a dozen slippery versions of myself, retreating and reshaping as I navigated the maze, until I found a mirror that made me disappear. I stepped back into the shadows, and then forward, reappearing, disappearing. Each time I drew close to the mirror, my reflection narrowed until it swallowed itself. Ben’s voice echoed from the exit, calling my name, and I hurried to catch up to him.
A crowd had gathered around the auction site, and I squeezed in for a look while Ben went to find his friend. The historical society had done a series of jack-o’-lanterns featuring prominent Keokuk homes, all carved by local artists. I recognized the Grand Anne, a Queen Anne–style Victorian that was now a bed-and-breakfast, and the Katie John House, former home of author Mary Calhoun. Then the man in front of me moved aside, and I saw Arrowood, its arched windows lit from within. The detail was stunning. Whoever carved it must have traced a real picture of the house as a guide. The wind blew and the candle inside the jack-o’-lantern guttered and flared, shadows moving inside the little house like ghosts.
I backed away into the milling crowd. Ben stood off to the side, listening attentively as a young woman with long wheat-colored hair spoke to him, waving her hands around for emphasis and then laughing as she squeezed his arm. Envy soured my stomach as I watched them together. This had to be Courtney. I had hoped Ben’s silence meant the relationship wasn’t serious, that it wasn’t worth telling me about.
I headed for the food stands in the parking lot by the riverboat museum and looked around until I found one selling caramel apples. They’d been my favorite Halloween treat when I was a kid, though I was pretty sure they hadn’t cost five dollars back then. I admired the apple’s smooth, glossy coating. This was how caramel apples were meant to be served: impaled whole on a Popsicle stick, not cut into finger-friendly slices and served with caramel on the side. I tried to maneuver my mouth around to take a bite, and ended up with caramel on my nose and in my hair. As it should be, I told myself. No wonder my mother had hated it when I ate these things.
I was uncomfortably sticky after finishing the apple, and I wiped my hands and face with wet paper towels at one of the portable sinks. I spotted a man who looked like Heaney walking in my direction, the same slouching gait and receding hair, and I hurried off before he could catch up to me. I didn’t feel like talking to him after our strange conversation earlier in the day. On my way back to the auction, I came across a tent labeled MADAME YVONNE, FORTUNE-TELLER. The tent itself was typical dirty canvas, but the entrance was draped with tie-dyed scarves. The flap was open, revealing an empty chair and the reek of incense.
“Are you coming in or not? I can see your feet,” a voice called from inside. The accent was heavy and obviously fake, a feminine version of Count Chocula.
I ducked under the scarves and into the tent. The fortune-teller looked younger than I expected—younger than me—which didn’t give me much confidence in her abilities, though to be fair, I didn’t have much confidence in any fortune-teller’s abilities. Madame Yvonne was the sort of girl I’d always envied, one with an abundance of hair. It sprawled down her back and over her shoulders, dark and glossy, and formed a widow’s peak low on her forehead. Gold chandelier earrings glittered down her neck. Everything about her was striking and overdone: thick eyebrows, black eyeliner, purple lipstick, henna tattoos covering every inch of her hands.
“You want me to read your fortune?” she asked. Her eyelids drooped low like she was sleepy or high. Maybe both. She shuffled tarot cards on the wobbly table in front of her. They made shushing sounds as her hands worked them back and forth.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
She nodded toward a metal cashbox with a slit in the top. It was chained to the table. “Ten dollars.”
I slid the money into the box, and she abruptly stopped shuffling.
“I’m Madame Yvonne. What’s your name?” she asked.
“Does it matter?” I’d visited psychics before, and had seen plenty of fake ones on TV. I knew better than to give away any personal information.
Madame Yvonne shrugged and smacked her gum. “Not to me.” She handed me the deck of cards. They were new enough to be slippery, the edges still sharp. The red and brown design on the back reminded me of an Oriental rug rolled up in the storage room at Arrowood. “You shuffle, then cut the deck.”
I had never mastered the art of shuffling, and Madame Yvonne sighed impatiently as I spread the cards out, mixed them up, and then tried to fit them all back together. When I finished, I handed the deck back to her.
“No,” she said, refusing to take them. “You do it. Think about whatever it is that you came to see me for. Deal three cards, lay them out in a row.”
I did as she said, thinking about the twins. I heard voices behind me. “Form a line!” Madame Yvonne barked to whoever was outside. “Wait your turn.”
She studied the cards, and then looked into my eyes. “These cards are your past, present, and future. The Six of Cups card, here, represents your feelings and emotions.” An illustration of two yellow-haired children in a garden. They were smiling. My stomach twisted like it was being wrung out. “Happy memories. Clinging to the past. The Cups suit is associated with the element of water.” I was born at the confluence of two rivers, I thought. My heart orients itself to the Mississippi. Everything in my house is inexplicably damp.
Madame Yvonne watched me for some response, her dark eyelashes flapping like an ostrich’s, and I sat perfectly still.
“The second card,” she continued, tapping it with a black-painted fingernail, “is the Wheel of Fortune. It can help or hinder you on your journey.” The card depicted a golden eight-spoked wheel surrounded by a sphinx, a snake, an Anubis, and four winged creatures of the zodiac. The zodiac figures appeared to be reading books. “The sphinx represents life’s mysteries,” she said. “The Wheel of Fortune is unpredictable. It’s a turning point. Everything rests on the way the Wheel turns, and your reaction to it. You can’t choose your fate, but you can choose how to respond.” She nodded emphatically, as though this was both very important and very true, her chandelier earrings swishing back and forth.
“Your third card, here, the Ace of Wands, that represents vision and intuition.” She pushed it closer for me to get a good look a
t the cartoonish hand reaching out of a cloud, holding a stick. Madame Yvonne watched me through her lashes, waiting to see if I would ask for more information. I wasn’t sure she knew what she was doing. Maybe she had learned to read tarot from Wikipedia, same as me.
“How do I know what it means?”
She frowned. “The Ace of Wands represents potential. Opportunity. It is not about intellect but inner vision. What it says to me is, you’ll have to rely on your gut to see clearly.”
In college, I had saved up to visit two reputable psychics, one of whom was also a medium. The first psychic declared unequivocally that the twins were no longer living, and hadn’t been for some time. The medium could not make contact with them, and thus concluded that they must still be alive. I didn’t cry either time. I listened to what they had to say and left with an empty wallet.
The incense was beginning to irritate my throat, and I coughed to clear it. Madame Yvonne swept her hand over the cards with a flourish, like a magician revealing a trick. “I hope you found the answer to your question.”
“No,” I said, my eyes lingering on the Six of Cups, the smiling blond children. “But I wasn’t really expecting to.”
Madame Yvonne raised an eyebrow. “You want more, it’s gonna cost more.”
“Thanks,” I said, starting to get up.
She reached out and jabbed the Six of Cups with her fingernail. “This card,” she said. “This one spoke to you.”
I hesitated, then fished another ten out of my pocket. “This is all I have.”
She held out her hand to take it, and instead of putting it in the cashbox, she stuffed it down into her bra. She looked a bit more alert now, pleased that her hustle had worked.
“You’re clearly a water sign,” she said, leaning forward and sliding the Cups card toward me. “The element of water is your guiding force. It’s no mistake you are here, between two rivers. You were drawn to this place. You’re looking for something that wants to be found. Let the water speak to you, guide you.”
