By the time she’d clambered awkwardly out of the grave, Sophie had laid her bundled boy gently against a root and moved to help. She took Natalie’s feet, straightening her friend as Jess prepared to roll her into the tarp for the last time. Then, abruptly, Sophie turned, took up her own child again, kissed him on the forehead, and slid him back into Natalie’s arms, which of course had stayed folded, as though waiting for him.
“I thought you wanted to bury him by the beach,” Jess said.
“He’s better off with Nat.”
“You’ve got that right.” The words just flew from her mouth, and Jess regretted them immediately. Kind of. She saw the look that crossed Sophie’s face, too, and braced for another lunge.
But Sophie stayed put, still staring down at her best friend, her baby boy.
“How could you do this?” Jess blurted out. “How could you let this happen? Either one of you. You were good girls, Sophie. You were such…” She smashed her teeth together, grabbed the shovel. Too late, she realized Sophie might take that as some sort of threat, when all Jess was actually considering was jamming the handle into her own mouth to keep in all these words, the thousands and thousands of them massing at the back of her throat. If she let them loose, she thought she might never get them stopped. They would spirit her straight off her feet and off this hill and drown her.
If Sophie had responded—if she had so much as looked up—Jess would have unleashed it all. She wouldn’t have been able to help it.
But Sophie just gazed at her son, and sometimes at Natalie’s shattered face. And after a long, long while, Jess felt her churning insides subside, at least temporarily. The words didn’t so much evaporate—they would never evaporate, she would never be rid of them—as recede. They would drown her from the inside.
“You were such good girls,” she whispered. She allowed herself a single sob, and turned once more to the task at hand.
It took less time and pain than Jess expected to drag the bodies those last few feet and drop them into their grave. Without being asked or even reacting to the light that was sifting through the branches, now, raising instant and ugly red rashes down both of her exposed arms under the bloody ruin of her dress, Sophie immediately started scraping up dirt with her hands. Jess used the shovel. In what seemed no time, they’d filled in the hole together.
The moment that was done, and the mound of dirt patted close to flat, Jess turned, threw the shovel downhill into the shrubs, and turned toward her Sunfire. She would have offered Sophie a ride in the wheelbarrow, but Sophie had already swung herself around and was moving back up the path, with no grace but surprising speed. Jess wasn’t certain, but she thought she could hear Sophie whimpering as she scuttled forward, fleeing the light and the grave of her child and her lifelong best friend.
Of course, that sound could also have been Sophie grunting as she gained control of her movements, started to marshal the impossible, astonishing strength in her hands and her shoulders.
When Jess got back to the car, Sophie was leaning against it, up on her stumps, peering into the backseat at Benny. Again, Jess was reminded of a raccoon. The way Benny was staring back, on the other side of the closed window, reminded her of an indoor cat with its back up: magnetized, riveted, unable to look away, shuddering with a threat it could never make good on. Whatever noise Sophie had been making in the woods, she’d gone silent, now.
“You know what,” Jess said, “I can’t have you sitting next to me anymore. I’m sorry.”
With what felt like the last strength in her entire body, she nudged Sophie away, opened the door, helped Benny once more to his feet and eased him into the front seat. Not until she’d got him buckled in place did she remember that if she put Sophie in back, she’d be sitting next to Eddie. And that was not going to happen, ever. And so, stumbling and shaking, Jess returned Benny to where he’d been.
All that while, Sophie hunched in the shade by the cyclone fence. Her mouth moved, but she wasn’t saying anything. Jess thought maybe she was singing, now. Saying good-bye to her Roo, the same way Jess had said good-bye to Natalie. Maybe she was.
“Are you finished?” Sophie asked, when Jess finally stepped away from the car. Then she swung forward and pulled herself up into the front passenger seat. When she tried to buckle herself in, she almost tipped face first into the dash. “Shit.”
“I’ll do it,” said Jess, leaning over. “Sit still. Don’t touch me.”
Sophie waited until Jess was bent all the way over, then poked a finger into her shoulder blade. “I touched you.”
“Sophie, I’m not kidding, I’ll dump you in the fucking woods.”
“Maybe you should.”
Seat belt in place, Jess straightened. “See, that’s the difference between us. Right there. You’re my responsibility, now. I might not want it. But I will never, ever forget it.”
“Right,” Sophie muttered. “’Cause you’re a good girl.”
“You’re right. I am. I was. I thought I was.”
“Me, too,” Sophie said. And then neither said anything more.
Several times during their slow wind down the Concerto Woods road out of the trees and into the day, Jess imagined she could feel Sophie’s gaze on her. But when she flashed her own eyes to the rearview mirror, she kept finding Sophie with her head turned—farther than it should have been able to go, like an owl’s—so that she could look in the back. Toward Eddie, or Benny.
Benny was lying down, legs scrunched up against Eddie’s seat, so Jess couldn’t see his face. But he was awake, and he was looking back. She could tell; she could hear it in his breathing. She started to say something, realized she had no idea what that would be, and then Sophie filled the silence for her.
“Hey, there, not-so-big boy. Not-so-big Jesus-God hairy boy. Wow, Jess. It’s like you fluffed him or something.”
“Shut up, Sophie.”
“Poofed him. Popped him. Were you two always an item? Have you been a secret thing all these years? Did Natalie know? I had no idea. I thought—”
“I will hurl you from this car, Sophie. I will suspend you from the branches and leave you for the squirrels.”
“Leave the squirrels for me, you mean?” said Sophie, quietly.
That was the moment Jess came closest to doing it, to slamming on the brakes and kicking Sophie out the door. She imagined tossing her severed legs after her like luggage. If Sophie had been smiling, Jess almost believed she would have done it.
But Sophie wasn’t. And Jess didn’t.
Eddie stirred, started to squawk, or maybe he was simply saying hello. Good morning to the world without his mother in it.
“Benny, give him Cheerios, okay?” Jess said. “Talk to him. Please? Don’t let him scream anymore.”
Benny grunted and gasped as he pulled himself into a sitting position and worked the Cheerios baggie out of the side pocket of the child seat.
“Sssh,” he said to Eddie, and “Oh, really? Same to you,” and, “Wait, Eddie, watch this.”
Jess had no idea what it was he wanted Eddie to watch. But she was so grateful, in that instant, for the hint of laughter in Benny’s voice, which wasn’t fake or forced, just buried in the rubble of the last month of their lives. Which had also been their only month as an actual couple.
Don’t, she told herself. Told Benny, in her head. Don’t let me scream anymore.
Behind her, through a mouthful of Cheerios and his own fingers, Eddie laughed.
They were all but out of the woods, now, within view of the turnpike on-ramp. Full daylight burst through the windshield, and Sophie curled as tightly as she could against the door, trying to tuck her arms inside her dress, then behind the stump of her torso. Even so, she saw the last billboard at the same instant Jess did. And for one more moment, she stopped squirming, went still.
August 22nd, the billboard proclaimed, in red, white, and blue letters spangled with glitter that winked in the sun. Live at Concerto Woods. Sing along with the Archies reunion tour!!
Then Sophie burst out laughing. “Oh my God,” she cooed. “Your daughter is going to hate that.”
9
God, it really was like sticking his hands in a hot tub, the Whistler thought, turning his wrists first one way, then the other in the holes he’d punched in the maintenance man’s rib cage. That was because of the heat, of course, but also the occasional spurty jets that pumped new waves of warm over his poor, pallid skin. That warm never lasted long, and it was already cooling, now, the light in this man’s lonely eyes flickering as the Whistler watched. Oscar, the man’s shirt said, on the stained pocket over his heart. Well, Oscar wasn’t fighting very hard, hardly even seemed to be paying attention to his own ending. Some of them were like that; they wasted their deaths the same way they had their lives, imagining where they’d be next, regretting where they’d never be again.
“You know, I didn’t even mean to,” he told the man, this Oscar, turning his wrists gently, nudging aside bulgy bits of shuddering organ, tendrils of shredded cartilage until he found what felt like a solid carapace of unshattered bone. Wedging his forearms under that, the Whistler held the man upright so he could die on his feet.
It was true. He hadn’t meant to do any killing tonight, or any anything, really. A few hours ago, he’d just been wandering the streets of this nothing town yet again, sneaking into backyards, peering in windows, sliding into houses for what fun there was in sliding into houses. He’d lurked in a couple of people’s closets while they slept, because that was always at least a little fun. He’d just crouch in their clothes, Whistle low into their dreams, maybe pet their animals. Take a key or ring off a nightstand. Tonight, he’d taken a phone. For the eighth or ninth night in a row, he’d wound up walking this leafy little nowhere of a campus, wandering into dormitories and classroom buildings, climbing the Clocktower, listening to his own echo.
But then, through giant windows he’d somehow missed every other time he’d strolled here, he’d caught sight of the four of them: the boy with the plastic dart stuck to his forehead, the laughing Asian girl with lightning for eyes, the pretty pumpkin-faced redhead with her rounded bookworm shoulders. And the little still one, just sitting there among them, laughing and singing like the others, and yet so immediately, obviously separate. Just sitting in her zip-up summer sweater, brown hair back but not too far, brown eyes wide open, so wide open, like bird-chick mouths. Eyes that would swallow whatever the world brought them; they wouldn’t be able to help it.
That made him want to bring them something.
How long had he watched? He didn’t know. Why had he taken a flyer off the door? He just had, and he’d taken it back up the Clocktower with him, and he’d stood amid the gears of the clock, in one of the belfry slits, so he could feel the air. It had seemed so still down on the grass. But up there, wind hurtled and hissed and rushed and whistled.
Are you lonely? the flyer read. And he was. He truly was. In need? Overwhelmed? Scared? Unsure what to do? If you ever are … or just want someone to talk to … we’re here. We’re always here. Weeknights 8:00 p.m.–midnight (or later). Weekends 8:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m. (or later).
On the spot, he’d taken out the phone he’d stolen from that old woman’s dresser. But he hadn’t called the Center, not right away. First—finally—he’d called Aunt Sally and told her about Mother.
And that had been fun. A sort of fun. Ruthless, imperious Aunt Sally, who’d never done anything, much, who sat in a tent but deemed herself Prescriber of everyone else’s fates. Aunt Sally, who’d never understood him, or music, or even Mother.
Yes. Hearing her silence had been fun.
And yet, the moments after he’d hung up … those were confusing. When, exactly, had he slid a foot through the slit in front of him? When had he turned his hips and just edged forward, and forward some more, until he was halfway out in the whipping air, leaning over the campus into the night. The wind grabbed at his hat, tugged at his waist the way it did at birds’ wings. It wanted to fill him, pull him out to play. He came so close to leaning just that last bit more, unfurling at long last. Mother gone, his Destiny gone, no hunger to speak of, nowhere to go or be.
Why was he even here? Because he’d followed his Destiny’s mother, his Destiny’s murderer. But why had he done that? It seemed she should be something to him, mean something or other to him, though he couldn’t think what.
The truth was, he had never once, in his first life or this one, had to decide, on his own, what to do next. How did people decide such things?
He hadn’t even gone to a club or performed any music, he’d realized, then. He hadn’t so much as sung to himself, let alone Whistled to a crowd.
But here was all this air, and it was whistling, tousling his hair, nuzzling him, wrapping him in its wild arms. Sad little Whistler-shadow, up here in the air, so close to free. A single, sliding step from free.
That was the moment he’d looked down and seen the Center again, darkened by that point. Just the little Still One remained, limned by her computer light: already an angel, and she hadn’t even met him yet.
And so he’d called there instead. And he’d heard her voice, felt her opening to him even through the phone. She hadn’t been able to help it, as he’d known she wouldn’t. Not with eyes like that.
People worth talking to, she’d said. Staying up late.
Magical. A magical creature, same as him. And she’d been so right. He would show her just how right she was.
Starting now, he thought, as Oscar the maintenance man stopped twitching at the ends of his wrists, went motionless, sagged forward. Poor dead Oscar-fish, who’d almost made it to another morning.
Morning. In the fascination of this night, the tingling sense of awakening, the Whistler had actually forgotten what time it was.
“Come on,” he said, withdrew his hands, settled Oscar against him, and dragged him across the grass toward the alley at the edge of campus where he’d left his truck.
Most mornings, these past weeks, he’d driven well out of town, way out into the empty, wondrous woods. But there wasn’t time now, and anyway, he didn’t want to be far from town anymore. He wanted to be near his new, Still One, and all the sights and splendors he would bring her. So he turned down a lane, juddered between birch trees and sugar maples onto a path. Branches scraped the sides of his truck, battered at his windows. He found a clearing, deep in shadow, and parked there. It was nowhere Mother would have stayed: too much like a campground, either too close to people or not close enough. For today, it suited the Whistler fine.
Except that it didn’t. He tried closing his eyes, pulling the silver blackout sunshade across the windshield and windows, curling up on the seat. He tried turning on the radio, but there was no radio worth hearing, here. He tried murmuring into the quiet, imagining upcoming conversations. But that just made him hear his new, Still One’s voice.
People worth talking to …
And so—knowing there wasn’t enough shadow, not this close to town, knowing it would hurt—the Whistler popped his door lock and stepped out once more into the air.
Where was he going? Nowhere, of course. There was nowhere to go, nothing to be done, nowhere that wouldn’t hurt for him to be for hours and hours, yet. And yet, he couldn’t stand the thought of another day alone and bored in the truck. For almost the first time since the night she died, he thought of Mother. As he did, he stepped around front of the Sierra, wandered a few steps ahead, and stopped, startled. Then he held absolutely still.
Where had those come from? How lost and distracted a Whistler was he, that he hadn’t noticed them?
Just on the other side of a thicket of bramble-hedges, in a clearing already bathed in scalding sunlight, sat a circle of old trailers, sinking into the dirt. Triangle, really, there were only three. Pretty quickly, the Whistler realized there were no people in them. One was tipped forward off its base, its w
indows bashed in, its front door leaning open into the dirt. One had an American flag painted all along the side, only the flag had so many rust stains (or rust holes) riddled through it that it was barely recognizable. The third one’s roof sagged so deeply into its walls that it looked half-folded-up. Like a giant’s discarded briefcase, the Whistler thought, liked that thought, and laughed. Maybe he would bring his Still One here. Show her things. Yes, perhaps he would.
Maybe even tonight.
That was almost enough. Shivering his pleasure, humming, the Whistler started to turn back toward Mother’s truck. It was impulse—instinct—that drove him instead deeper into the woods. He drifted, desultorily, along the path he’d found, which was so overgrown that it might never actually have been a path, not for people. Surprisingly deep, these woods turned out to be. In these pines, he was humming, all but Whistling, inside his head. Where no sun could ever shine. Any moment, he thought he’d come to some spot too overrun with branch and bramble to pass. Instead, he came to the road.
He must have walked some way, he realized, farther than he’d imagined. There, maybe three hundred yards to his right, was the edge of this nothing town, that gas station, the brick pizza place with the strange hulking barn-structure out back, which always seemed to be breathing when the Whistler passed it. Certainly, it hummed.
Daylight nipped at his exposed wrists, his cheeks, even under his hat, even back here in the shadow of the evergreens and maples. It really was time to go back, curl up in the truck with whatever music he could find, and sleep, and wait. He was just about to do that when he glanced left—up the road, away from town—and saw them.
It seemed so unlikely, amazing, delicious. It was almost enough to make him believe in Aunt Sally’s damn fool nonsense. Policy. Fate.
Except that he hadn’t told anyone his dreams. No one had led him here. That is, he had led himself here. And now he could see them.
They were kissing. There, on the bench, under the little fiberglass overhang that constituted a bus stop. That is, the raven-haired one, all elbows and laughter, was kissing, and the boy—who still had his plastic dart suctioned to his forehead—was lolling away, or just lolling. Maybe he was too drunk to respond. Maybe he just didn’t love this girl, not the way she clearly did him. Or maybe, the Whistler thought, shivering with the pleasure of the idea, he loved another.
Good Girls Page 9
