He sighs, as if I’ve disappointed him. “I tried calling her, obviously,” he says. “She never picked up. Misha said she didn’t want to talk to anyone.” This gets my attention. Maybe Misha was more attuned to her former best friend than she claims. Turning back to the bar, Brent fiddles with a damp cocktail napkin. “The funny thing is, Misha and I weren’t even close until Kaycee ran off.” He takes a long pull of his drink. “Tragedies do that, I guess. Bond you with people. I think she was hoping it would do more than bond us.”
I think of surprising Brent and Misha together at the Dell. Brent was either comforting her or pleading with her—I couldn’t tell which. They looked close then. But even then I had the impression that Kaycee was with them; that she was hovering, unseen, outside the circle of their bodies. That they’d been talking about her.
“Is that what it was, when Kaycee left? A tragedy? At the diner, you seemed happy about it.”
“Never stop being a lawyer, do you?” He says it jokingly, but I can hear the reprimand. “Can’t it be both? I was…happy, to be free of her. But it was tragic that it got to that point. She…destroyed things. Do you know what I mean?”
For a moment I imagine Kaycee coaxing Chestnut toward her with treats. How furious she was when Chestnut began to snap and growl. There’s something wrong with that dog. It’s probably rabid. Someone should shoot it.
“Yes,” I say simply. Then, without thinking: “Did you ever love her?”
Brent is quiet for a while. He stirs his drink and then empties it in one swallow. Finally he looks at me.
“What did I know? I was young.” Now his smile has left behind a lingering exhaustion. “Can you love someone who isn’t capable of loving you back?”
Funnily enough, it’s my father who comes to mind. Do dogs go to heaven? I asked him once, my throat raw from crying after Chestnut died.
No, he replied shortly. But afterward he took a plastic garbage bag from the toolshed and bundled Chestnut’s body inside of it, and told me to get the shovel. We walked down to the lip of the reservoir, and in silence he made a grave and lowered Chestnut into it. Heaven is for redeemed sinners, he said, after hours of silence. Dogs don’t need it. They live their whole lives in heaven.
And I loved him more then than I’ve ever loved anyone.
“Oh, sure,” I say. My drink tastes like hair spray. I’ve let it sit too long. “I think that’s probably the realest love of all.”
—
Outside, the sun is just setting, and a golden glow lingers over the parked cars.
“Listen, Abby.” Brent seizes my hand when I’ve already said good-bye—embarrassed, in the sudden light, that I’ve said anything or called him at all. He takes a step closer to me, and for a second, I’m sure he’s going to kiss me. “I know you’re here for blood, okay? You’re not going to find anything.”
“I’m not here for blood, Brent.” We’re standing so close I can see the veins of color in his eyes. “I’m here for the truth.”
He frowns as if he doesn’t believe it. “I know it sounds crazy, but this town loves Optimal. I love Optimal.” He’s searching my face as if for signs that I believe him. “They’ve done a lot of good. You should see the new community center—you should see the theater they’ve built, a whole arts wing for the school to use. They’ve given life to this town.”
He talks like the converted do about church.
I extricate my hand from his. “If they’ve done nothing wrong, there’s nothing to worry about.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about you. I just…don’t want anything to change between us, okay?” he says at last, though I’m almost positive that isn’t what he originally intended. “After all these years…” He sucks in a breath. “I always wanted to see you. I always hoped I would.”
Then he does kiss me. His lips are cold and taste like cheap tequila. A little like metal, too.
Like he’s the one who’s out for blood.
Chapter Twenty
My rental house is dark and humming with recycled air. I punch off the window units and shove open a window in the kitchen and my bedroom, even though I’ll regret it when I wake up sweating. Immediately the sound of country relaxes me. Emptiness punctuated by crickets chirping and the hoot of an owl. For eighteen summers, I fell asleep to that same sound.
It pulls me back to the past, to riding my bike—a salvaged thing my dad found behind one of his job sites and hammered into shape—down the rock-studded path that led to the reservoir. It pulls me back to stripping with Kaycee down to our underwear to swim out in the reservoir, competing to see how long we could hold our breath underwater, and of how she used to float on her belly, letting her hair fan out around her, pretending she was dead.
It was the summer after sixth grade when I found Chestnut—or, rather, he found me. Kaycee got a bad flu, and for a week straight I didn’t see her. I spent hours alone in the woods. I was lying on the ground counting clouds when I heard the whine of something behind me and sat up imagining a bobcat, a bear, or I don’t know what. Instead, a wiry, half-starved dog was eyeing me through the branches in the woods. Crying and wagging its tail all at once.
One of the only things I bothered unpacking is an old wooden jewelry box that used to belong to my mother and still, I imagine, every so often, releases a bit of her smell.
On top of the stained velvet lining that’s peeling away from the wood is a plain red collar, faded with age.
Chestnut Williams, it reads, next to the home phone number my dad still uses.
I begged my dad to take me to the pet store to buy it; he told me I was stupid for trying to put a collar on a stray, that Chestnut was just after a free meal, that he’d disappear soon enough, that I was wasting my money buying him toys and a collar he’d never wear. But when I slipped the collar over his head, his tail perked up. Like he was proud to finally belong to somebody. My dad thought Chestnut would be a burden on us both. But it didn’t take long for my dad to come around and let him sleep at the foot of my bed.
Kaycee couldn’t believe what she’d missed. She’d had the flu for seven days, she said, and I’d replaced her with a mangy animal. She sulked about it, and I thought she was only joking. I told her she would love Chestnut when she got to know him. I told her how he would eat right from my palm, how his leg would play a fiddle when you scratched his belly just right. I told her Chestnut could be our dog.
I’ve always wanted a dog, she confessed to me, in a whisper.
Once she got into the idea, she couldn’t stop talking about Chestnut and all the fun we’d have together, how we could teach him tricks and at Christmas we could dress him like a reindeer and tie him to a sled.
I don’t know what went wrong, exactly. Maybe he was sick. Maybe we’d startled him. Maybe he just took one sniff of Kaycee and knew. But Chestnut started growling at her, really growling, his back arched, all the teeth showing in his gums. I’d never seen him growl like that. I called his name, I tried to soothe him, as Kaycee stood there terrified.
“He hates me.” And that was the first time ever that I’d seen her cry. Two tears—that was it.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s only scared because you’re a stranger,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t true. In an instant, Chestnut lunged for her, snapping an inch from her fingers.
“He tried to bite me!” She was screaming.
I’d never seen her look like that. It was rage, pure rage, like I’d only ever seen on my dad.
“What’s wrong with that stupid dog?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him.”
She looked at me. “Oh, yeah? So you think it’s normal to try and bite somebody’s hand off?”
And then, because I was angry: “Maybe there’s something wrong with you.”
Right away, I wished I hadn’t said it. Kaycee froze. A normal twelve-year-old kid would have cried, or shouted, or insulted me back.
But not Kaycee. She just stood
there, very still.
“Maybe,” she said finally. She turned away. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “Dogs like that should be put down.”
—
Now I ball the collar in my hand. I aim for the trash can, knowing, of course, I won’t do it. For years I’ve threatened to get rid of the collar. For years I’ve pretended that I keep it only to remember him. But I’ve kept it to remember her, and to remember what she did.
She didn’t poison Chestnut right away. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thought that way she’d get away with it.
When I accused her she barely blinked.
He’s so dumb, he probably got into the rat poison all on his own, she said.
Except, she had stolen his collar. So I would know it wasn’t an accident. Even way back then, she liked to turn the truth inside out, to make it look like a lie and vice versa, until you couldn’t know the difference.
The craziest part was that she actually blamed me when I said I would never speak to her again. She actually seemed hurt, like she couldn’t understand why I was being so mean to her.
For the next six years, after she’d grown, after she’d gathered all the subjects she had ever imagined for herself, she never once admitted to touching Chestnut.
And then, on the last day of school, I went to clean out my locker and found Chestnut’s collar hanging neatly from a hook.
She kept it.
All those years, she kept it.
A few hours later, she asked Misha for a ride to Indianapolis, saying she wanted to scout for bartending jobs and would take a bus home later. But she never took the bus home. She never came home at all.
Why did she do it? Why was it the last thing she did?
I drop the collar back into my mom’s jewelry box and latch the whole thing shut.
Sometimes, I think, in her crazy way, Kaycee left me that collar because she knew it would hurt, and hurt was how she knew that I would never forget her.
Other times, I think that maybe she was just saying good-bye.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next day, Thursday, I’m up at an hour even my father couldn’t criticize.
I make my coffee so strong it tastes like mud. I might have gotten four or five hours of sleep max, even though I was home before eight o’clock. I spent the night sweating out cheap alcohol, staring at the ceiling, and twisting between different memories and half-formed ideas.
I slug my mud-coffee and watch Barrens shake off its nighttime mist. I try to see Barrens as a stranger might, and in the early light it looks beautiful. Maybe Brent was right and I am on some kind of witch-hunt. Maybe I want Optimal to be crooked, just so I have something, anything, to straighten out.
Maybe my obsession is all a fantasy.
Or maybe not. But this morning, I’m going to follow Brent’s advice: it’s time for a tour of some of Optimal’s good works.
—
The Barrens-OPI Community Center is halfway between the high school and the gates of the Optimal Plastics Complex, directly across the road from the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store. The theater that Brent mentioned is complete; it’s a modern, steel-and-glass exterior completely at odds with the squat brick shoeboxes that otherwise define architecture in Barrens. It’s not even nine A.M. and there are already cars in the newly poured lot, and though the doors are locked, when I press my face to the glass I can make out a blur of movement inside. I’m surprised to see Misha in the lobby, pacing, phone pressed between shoulder and cheek.
When she spots me, she hangs up without saying good-bye and slips the phone into a pocket. She hesitates for a fraction of a second before unlocking the door.
“Abby.” Today, she is dressed the part of vice principal, in a cheap pantsuit and a lavender blouse. “You pop up everywhere, don’t you? I’m starting to think you might be following me.”
“Small town. You said it yourself—there’s nothing else to do but be in everybody’s business. Besides, it isn’t every day Barrens gets a community center.”
“True enough. But we’re not actually open yet. Can I help you with something?”
Last night, Brent told me that after Kaycee left, Misha had told him that she’d wanted a clean break. But if Kaycee confessed her desire to disappear, she might have confessed other things.
“I was supposed to meet somebody from Optimal for a tour before opening,” I lie, seizing the opportunity to talk to her. “I made an appointment, but I’m afraid she thought I said yesterday. No wonder she’s not picking up my phone calls.”
She hesitates again, then bumps the door open a little wider with her hip. “Come on,” she says. “Although there isn’t much to see. Only the first phase is complete.”
“I was so curious. What an ambitious project.”
“Oh, this isn’t half of it. Eventually, we’ll have a reception venue, plus a gym for after-school sports programs. Classrooms for alternative education, too.”
The building is expansive, open, and airy, and sunlight filters through the skylights.
“Wow. It’s…” Ugly. The kind of ugliness only a shit ton of money can produce. But of course I won’t say that. “Ambitious. Doesn’t even feel like Barrens in here, does it? Must be costing a fortune,” I say brightly.
Her eyes slide to mine only briefly. “Optimal is financing most of the project,” she says. “We’ve got government grants as well. Taxes pay for the rest.”
“You seem very…passionate.” What I actually mean is: very involved.
“Principal Andrews and I both pushed for it. Before, our students had nowhere to go and nothing to do after school,” she says. “Often their home lives are a big part of the problem. When there’s nothing else to do…Idle hands find trouble.” She reaches a door that points the way to the theater stage, and again she holds the door open for me.
“Have you ever thought it might be a problem that so many people depend on one company?” I keep my voice casual, as if I’m just thinking the question myself.
She glances at me. “Why would it be a problem?”
“For years Optimal has been dogged by rumors of pollution, of corruption, cover-ups.”
“Rumors aren’t facts, Abby. Thank God. Otherwise we all would have been in trouble in high school. You especially.”
That’s another point to Misha. I smile as sweetly as possible. “True. And smoke isn’t fire. But sometimes where there’s one, there’s the other…No one wants to hold Optimal accountable. In fact, no one will even entertain it.”
“We’re proud of Optimal here,” Misha says pointedly. “I don’t see how that’s a problem.”
I pick my words carefully. “They’ve bought a lot of love, is all I’m saying.”
I’m worried she’ll get angry. Or maybe I’m hoping for it—a crack in her veneer. But this only seems to amuse her. “Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”
“Well, that depends on who’s buying,” I say.
“The problem is that people think in black and white. They think they can have the good without the bad. But everything that’s good for one person is probably bad for someone else. Life isn’t like the Bible says it is. It isn’t a choice between good and evil. It’s about choosing which evils you can stand.”
“So you admit Optimal is evil.”
That, at least, gets her to smile. “All I’m saying is that if Optimal has made mistakes, do a few rashes here or there mean we should shut down the biggest employer in the area?”
“We’re not just talking about rashes, and you know it. We’re talking about chemicals that cause major damage. People aren’t disposable. People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their lives and their health to put food on the table.”
“Oh, Abby.” She sighs. “I envy you. It must be nice to know you’re right so much of the time.”
A knot of anger rises in my chest. “I don’t know I’m right. But I know what’s not right.”
“Do you?” She tilts her head to squint at me. “Take Frank Mitc
hell as an example. He makes his living selling pornography.” The way she says it, the word has about a hundred syllables.
“Pornography isn’t illegal,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow. “Fine. Sure. But let’s say he has a customer, a normal man, husband and father, who keeps a little porn stash on the sly, nothing serious. And then, let’s say, at some point he says what he’s really after are the younger girls. Much younger. And it turns out this nice, upstanding man, with his nice, upstanding family, has a fetish for schoolgirls.” She says all of this calmly, with immense self-control, as if we’re still talking about plans for the auditorium. All the hairs lift on the back of my neck. “Now let’s say Frank Mitchell sells him a magazine where the girls look much younger than they actually are. But of course they are of age. Paid professionals. The man goes home happy. If he doesn’t, the man will just go out and find the real thing.”
I am so stunned I just stare at her.
She spreads her hands. Innocent. “You see, some people would think Frank Mitchell had done a terrible thing by selling that kind of magazine. But it would still be the right thing.”
“Or,” I say, trying to keep the tremor from my voice, “he could simply call the police.”
“The man would just deny it.” Misha shrugs, as if the point is so obvious it barely needs to be stated. Then: “Should we continue the tour?”
I want nothing more than to run—from Misha, from this cold palace built on Optimal money to save the kids it might be pumping full of poison, from the crazy economy of sacrifice that Misha believes in. But I follow her mutely through another swinging door.
Misha raises the lights and the hallway takes shape in front of us: dark-painted walls, and a row of student photographs framed on both sides, surrounded by constellations of paper stars.
“These are our Optimal Stars,” she says brightly. “The recipients of the Optimal Scholarship. Remember the scholarship program I mentioned? For several years now, we’ve worked with Optimal to grant full or partial scholarships to a handful of students who show academic promise. Most of them struggle with difficult home lives. Some have had disciplinary problems. But the program really turns them around.” She sounds like she’s reciting from a brochure. For all I know, she might be. “The first was Mackenzie Brown. She was a ballroom dancer. Don’t get that much around here.”
Bonfire: A Novel Page 12
