Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  She paused at the top of the steps, where the pull from the unoccupied wing grew sickeningly strong. What kind of lost thing created an ache like that? Barrie stared down the dark hallway, fighting the need to go investigate.

  How could Pru ignore this feeling? Walk past it day in and day out, as if she didn’t even feel it?

  Was it possible Pru didn’t have the gift? Barrie had no idea how it passed from one family member to another. Maybe it didn’t go to everyone.

  There were so many things she didn’t know. Even worse, she suspected she didn’t know what she didn’t know. Which made it hard to look for answers.

  She clomped down the staircase without touching the banister, trying not to make too much noise but sounding like a six-legged horse in spite of herself. At the bottom, she turned down a long wood-paneled corridor. The scent of ground beef, tomato, onion, garlic, and oregano led her through a swinging door into a time warp of a kitchen that hadn’t been updated since whenever avocado-ugly had still been in style.

  “I was beginning to think the house had swallowed you, sugar.” Pru glanced over her shoulder as she stirred a pot bubbling on the antique stove. “Did you find everything all right? Are you all unpacked?”

  “Yes, thanks. Should I set the table?”

  “That would be wonderful. The plates and glasses are there.” Pru pointed to a nearby cabinet with the spoon, splattering red sauce on the floor. “The silver is through the door in the butler’s pantry. Third drawer on the right, opposite the freezer.”

  The pantry was larger than Barrie had expected. A swinging door on the opposite end led into the tearoom, which was empty except for linen-covered tables and shelves lined with sweetgrass baskets, small art prints, and various jars of jams and pickled vegetables for sale.

  Barrie let the door fall closed again and retrieved the forks and knives. Those were actual silver, the same familiar pattern she had eaten with all her life. The blue and white plates she took from the kitchen cabinet were identical to Lula’s too, as if her mother had tried to re-create Watson’s Landing in San Francisco, only newer, better, less damaged.

  There was nothing new in Pru’s kitchen. No dishwasher or microwave, nothing modern. As for damage, one of the cabinets had a hole where the knob would have screwed in, and two of the drawer pulls were missing. On the back door the lock had torn free and now dangled uselessly from the security chain. It all had an air of faded respectability that was only underscored by the spotless cloth and cut-glass vase of apricot roses Pru had placed on the round oak table.

  The more Barrie saw of Watson’s Landing, the more she was glad she had asked Mark to send Lula’s things. But how was she supposed to tell Pru she had arranged to have a houseful of furniture delivered? That would sound like she thought what Pru had here wasn’t good enough, which wasn’t what she’d meant at all. And she’d had no right to make arrangements on Pru’s behalf.

  “I didn’t know what kind of food you would like.” Pru brought a bowl of steaming noodles and meatballs to the table and settled herself across from Barrie. “I hope you’re all right with pasta. To be honest, it’s not much fun cooking for myself. I usually eat whatever’s left over from the tearoom.”

  “I could help—I love to cook.”

  “I’ll bet a Sunday supper it wasn’t Lula who taught you that.”

  “No.” Barrie almost smiled. She couldn’t imagine Lula near a stove. “Mark and I had a weekend ritual where we’d order takeout from a restaurant and try to copy the recipe. Between that and watching the Cooking Channel, I’m pretty good. I could help you in the tearoom. Or clean, do dishes. Whatever.”

  “Just keep your own things in order, sugar. That’ll be plenty. Don’t worry. There’s not as much work as you’d think. The garden takes care of itself, and Mary comes in at noon to handle the tearoom. One way or another the work all gets done.”

  “But I honestly don’t mind.”

  “Why don’t you take time to settle in before we decide anything? September will be here before you can blink. Do you have any of your school shopping done yet?” Pru glanced dubiously at Barrie’s purple heels. “The kids might not wear the same clothes as they do in San Francisco. We tend less toward fancy and more toward comfortable around here.”

  Comfortable? Barrie wasn’t going to be comfortable no matter what she wore. The thought of school practically made her start to hyperventilate, and these shoes and the rest of her clothes would be the last things she and Mark ever bought together. Spaghetti slithered off her fork faster than she could wind it around.

  “Mark is sending all my things,” she said. And Lula’s. She tried to scrape up the courage to say those two little words aloud.

  How would Pru react? Barrie needed to call Mark and tell him she had changed her mind. Except she hadn’t. She wanted Lula’s things, and Pru needed Lula’s things, even if Pru didn’t know it yet.

  The click of silver on porcelain was like a metronome counting out the silence. Looking up, Barrie found her aunt watching her with the fixed stare of someone who isn’t seeing the present.

  Barrie cleared her throat. “This is wonderful spaghetti, Aunt Pru.”

  Pru shook her head as if mentally changing the subject. “Good. That’s good,” she said. “Now, did Lula ever mention Mary to you? I’m sure she must have, and the woman’s been like a cat on hot bricks ever since she found out you were coming.”

  “Mary?” Barrie stiffened at the thought of more stray relatives she’d never heard of. “Is she another aunt?”

  “She used to work here at the house, back when your mama and I were little. But Lula was always her favorite. Mary’ll tell you all kinds of stories about the trouble your mother would get up to.”

  “I can’t picture Lula getting into trouble. Were you identical twins?”

  “Lord, no. Lula got all the looks in the family—and she was always the first to say so. I can’t imagine she’d have changed that much. Did you bring any pictures with you?”

  Barrie stared at her aunt in shock, then hastily looked away. Pru didn’t know about the scars, she realized. But of course Pru couldn’t know. Unless the lawyer had mentioned it, and why would he?

  Barrie reached for her glass and set it back down again when she discovered her hand was shaking. How did she even start to explain?

  Lula would never have let a camera near her. Barrie had always known that her mother’s scars had to be bad, but she hadn’t understood. Not until the paramedics had taken off the wig and veil after the heart attack while trying to save Lula’s life.

  The scars, the tight plastic skin . . . Barrie laced her hands painfully in her lap.

  “There aren’t any pictures,” she said, her voice sounding thick and swollen. “I don’t have any.”

  “Oh. Well,” Pru said, too brightly, “it doesn’t matter. I’m sure she never looked much different than she did the last time I saw her. Lula was always primping—that’s what Daddy used to call it. Did she show you the pictures of herself in her pageant tiaras? I don’t even know if she took any of those with her.”

  Even a simple “no” wouldn’t slide past the knot forming in Barrie’s throat.

  “She was homecoming queen, too.” Pru paused with her fork in midair. “I can’t get over how long ago it all was. The days slip into one another. You blink, and a year has passed, and next thing you know, decades are gone.” The fork clattered against her plate.

  “Maybe you could show me some pictures of you two growing up,” Barrie said.

  “The historical society or someone in town should have a yearbook. I could ask.”

  Barrie leaned forward. “What about here? Photographs? Anything.”

  “Daddy threw all that away. Anything with Lula in it.” Pru’s eyes met Barrie’s, then slid to the clock on the wall. “Lord, would you look at the time? Seven and Eight will be here in a few minutes, and I haven’t started on that whoopie pie cake. I’ll have to use something from the freezer.”

  S
he scurried toward the butler’s pantry. Barrie stared after her, then carried the dishes from the table to the counter. Turning the tap to hot, she let the water run while she squeezed a green stream of soap into the sink.

  It was too quiet in the other room. Finally the freezer slammed, and Pru emerged red-eyed with a foil-wrapped package glazed in frost, which she set down on the counter.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about these.” Pru nudged her aside. “Go sit down. Relax. I have to let the cake thaw a few minutes anyway.”

  “At least let me dry.”

  Outside, the light was fading. Pru’s bent head reflected in the window as she scraped spaghetti into the trash.

  “Mr. Fergusen mentioned a heart attack,” she said, so softly, Barrie almost couldn’t hear it. “Did Lula suffer much?”

  Barrie sucked in a breath, trying to think about how to answer that. How much did Pru need to know? In her shoes, would Barrie have wanted to know the truth?

  Hip braced against the counter, Barrie twisted the soft cotton cloth between her fingers. “How much did Lula’s lawyer tell you?” she asked.

  Pru glanced at her sharply. “What about?”

  “About the fire that killed my father.” The dishcloth was wound so tight in Barrie’s fingers, the skin on her knuckles turned pale. She let it go and concentrated on smoothing it against her thigh. “Lula was in the bedroom when it started. She tried to climb out to the fire escape, but she was eight months pregnant with me. She couldn’t get the window open far enough. Her hair and clothes burned before the firemen reached her. Even after all the surgeries . . . The scars, the way she looked—”

  “The way she looked?” Pru slowly repeated Barrie’s words. “Her hair . . . her face? Oh, Lord. No.” The plate slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor. She swayed as her knees gave out.

  Barrie lunged to catch her aunt. She struggled to hold Pru up, but the dead weight carried them both to the ground. Pru burrowed her face in Barrie’s shoulder, shuddering with silent tears.

  “Here, let me get her.” Seven’s deep voice came from the kitchen door, along with a whisper of cooling air. Footsteps scratched on the broken porcelain, and he raised Pru to her feet. “What have you done to yourself now, woman? Look at you. You’re bleeding.” He guided Pru to the table and lowered her into the nearest chair. Accepting the napkin Barrie had hurriedly dampened, he dabbed at the cuts on Pru’s knees and the blood running in rivulets down her shins.

  There had to be clean towels somewhere. Barrie turned to search for them, and pulled up short when she saw Eight standing in the open doorway watching Pru and Seven with narrow-eyed intensity. When he caught Barrie looking at him, he pushed a hand through his thatch of sun-streaked hair and gave her a grin that lit him up.

  “Hello again,” he said.

  The greeting might as well have been in Swahili. Barrie’s tongue wouldn’t cooperate to answer. She nodded and made herself keep moving until she had found a clean towel and handed it to Seven.

  He wiped Pru’s knees again, then sat back on his heels so he and Pru were eye level. “Thank goodness none of these cuts are deep enough for stitches, but I’d like to put a butterfly bandage on a couple of them. Do you still keep the first aid kit in the butler’s pantry?”

  “On the counter by the door,” Pru said.

  “I’ll go get it.” Eight hurried across the kitchen.

  Seven’s attention was still on Pru. His eyes slid from her trembling lip to the hands she was folding and unfolding. His heart was naked, the way Pru’s had been when she’d watched him from the upstairs window. Then he surged up to tower over Pru as if he’d suddenly turned into a different person.

  “Now, do you want to tell me what harebrained thing you were thinking, woman, kneeling in broken china?”

  “What?” Pru stood and snatched the bloodstained towel from his hand. “I did it to give you something to complain about, of course. Knowing you were coming over and how much you like to play white knight and all.”

  “You know that isn’t what I meant—”

  “Then what? You thought I’d stop crying if you insulted me? You never could stand to see a woman cry. I haven’t forgotten that.”

  His voice dropped in warning. “Pru—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you start.”

  “Then talk to me. We can do better than this.”

  “Can we? I thought we were friends once.”

  “We are friends.”

  “We were. Twenty years ago. But clearly my father was right.”

  Barrie backed away as they argued, wishing herself invisible the way she had wished herself invisible a million times when Lula had screamed at Mark. It wasn’t until Eight came out of the pantry carrying the box of first aid supplies that either Pru or Seven appeared to remember they had an audience. Pru gave Seven a pointed stare and nodded in Barrie’s direction.

  Seven didn’t take his eyes off Pru. “Eight,” he said, “I don’t think Barrie’s had a chance to see the gardens yet. You should show her.”

  “Don’t you go anywhere, Barrie, sugar. You stay right here with me.” Pru looked stricken, determined, and mad all at once.

  Eight dropped the box onto the table beside his father so fast, a roll of gauze bounced out. He crossed the kitchen and gestured Barrie toward the door. “Come on. I’ll show you the path down to the river.”

  Barrie’s knees locked in indecision, remembering Pru’s earlier panic.

  “In case you haven’t picked up on our quaint local customs yet, that was our cue to get out and let them talk.”

  Eight stood so close, Barrie could feel his words on her cheek and smell his skin, like cloves and cherries and root beer. He held the door open and followed her outside to the terrace.

  Their arms brushed. Barrie jerked away.

  Did he feel it too? The not-lostness when they touched? Or was she the only one?

  “Shhh,” he said. “Quit moving around. I can’t hear what they’re saying.” He hadn’t quite closed the kitchen door behind them, and he motioned Barrie out of the line of sight while he ducked flat against the house to listen.

  “You came out here to eavesdrop?”

  “Like you’ve never done it.”

  Barrie shook her head. Mark and Lula’s fights had always been knock-down, drag-out loud with no concern for privacy.

  “Seriously?” Eight grinned down at her. “Knowing everybody’s business is practically a point of pride around here. You must have been raised by nuns or something.”

  Barrie thought of Mark in the Halloween costume he always trotted out in when they watched Sister Act. Mark doing his Whoopi-Goldberg-as-Deloris impression, arms up and butt out, shaking all six-foot-two-plus-heels of himself to “Hail Holy Queen.” A barrage of different emotions, too many to process, all punched Barrie at once. She rushed across the brick-covered terrace to get away from Eight, from the memory.

  “Hey, hold on.” Eight hurried after her. “I’m sorry. Whatever I said, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Just leave me alone.” Barrie’s footsteps quickened. She heard him behind her, then beside her again, but she didn’t stop. She wasn’t going to be responsible for anything that came out of her mouth just then.

  She didn’t want to be at Watson’s Landing listening to other people’s arguments. Dropped into lives already in progress, like a television program she’d switched on halfway through. Lives that had nothing to do with her. She wanted to be home with Mark. Except home didn’t exist anymore. Did she even know what the word meant? Had she ever known?

  She walked faster, rushing past the tearoom in the glassed-in portion of the porch, down a lighted staircase to the lower terrace, and into a maze made up of low boxwood hedges. Eight’s leather flip-flops smacked the soles of his feet beside her, and crunched as the brick walkway became an oyster-shell-and-gravel path leading to a three-tiered fountain at the maze’s center.

  He was there to steady her when she tripped. “Where exa
ctly are you going?” he asked.

  Where was she going? Barrie took deep breaths to ward off panic. Too much in her life was never going to be the same. Too much was new and strange.

  Even the garden looked arcane. Hundreds, thousands of fairy lights winked along the terraces and glowed among the trees, casting macabre shadows on the ground. Beyond the hedges, the river had turned the color of nothing in the twilight, mirroring the emptiness Barrie felt inside. But downstream, closer to where the Santisto emptied into the ocean, the lights of a subdivision were already coming on, spilling gold and red reflections like wounds across the water.

  There was no escape by the river, and too much light in the maze. Barrie veered across the lawn, giving in to the pull of the darkened woods.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Wait.” Trying to make eye contact with Barrie, Eight walked backward across the grass. “Would you please stop? I’m a jackass, okay? Don’t be mad. Come back to the house. Whatever I said, I’m sorry.”

  He was apologizing, but he looked confused. He deserved to be confused. Barrie herself didn’t know what she was doing. Running with nowhere to go. Running from herself.

  “You’re fine,” she said on a long, slow sigh. “It’s been a nightmare week.”

  Instead of relaxing, Eight’s face creased, and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “You haven’t had a chance to process yet. Dad says I holed up in a closet for three weeks after my mother died.” He turned to walk beside her, his shoulders hunched up as if to deflect the memory, and it took him a few beats before he continued: “I was ten. Apparently they hauled me out once in a while, hosed me off, fed me, and let me crawl back in because they knew I needed time.”

  Did his mother’s death still hurt as much? Or did dead-motherness eventually wear off?

  For Barrie, Lula’s death was all tangled up with Mark’s cancer. She couldn’t say where grief ended for one and started for the other, grief and love and unfairness. Why Mark? Why either of them?