Hoyt’s laughter subsides. He listens to the birds outside—larks, a phoebe, a raucous jay—as he strokes himself. His penis is unresponsive, pickled from the long bender begun that gray dawn in the trailer park.
And that’s the way he wants it. Deny them the satisfaction—take away their bone! If Jack Meltzer had any sense, he’d do the same. Instead, he has to lie here just like Hoyt, awaiting the will of the Mistress of the Manor. Under the white canopy, between four posters, the swagged bed curtains like white thighs, his head in their vise, he is doomed to his cage.
Mephitis mephitis.
CHAPTER FIVE
Collin clings to the slick obsidian rock. Foam-topped waves furl toward him, one after another and another. The sea rises like a chest filling with breath. He pounds his fists on the rock, Let me in! But he knows what will happen. He has been stuck in this dream before.
The rock will change into a house, and he will continue to bang on its door, screaming over the waves and wind, but the door will stay shut and he will remain locked outside.
And locked outside the dream is his body, limp as a corpse on his bed. The body’s mouth will open, and his screams escape. His mother will come into the bedroom, wake him up, and take him in her arms. And still he won’t feel safe. For days after, the memory will cling: shut out of his home, engulfed by a relentless tide, choking on water. Dying.
His silence, his wariness, his privately held terrors make him a strange child to his peers, his teachers, even to his mother and grandparents. “Seems confused, possibly has a learning disability,” the school counselor notes, sug gesting tests and meds.
But why shouldn’t he be confused? There’s the matter of his skin. As long as he has been alive, he has heard from his family: black is best. “You come from kings,” they say, then glance at each other, which he interprets to mean even though you’re not actually black.
Once again, he’s locked out of the club, his cries ripped away by the wind.
Gita Poonchwalla is the first person to open a door, to make him feel he belongs. In fact, he is crucial to her plans.
“You’re the Tawny One,” she always says. “The one I’ve been waiting for.”
This morning his father wakes him from the dream, calling “Breakfast!” from downstairs. Collin still isn’t used to Brett’s voice: the flat cadence, the absence of vigor. No “Git yo’ black be-hine down here!” like his grandmother, or “Don’t you be missin’at bus now” like his mother.
His college-educated mom always switches to another voice if some white person needs handling. She can “go Webster” as she puts it, speaking in the careful, armored tones of a newscaster, her eyes going hooded if that person gets a false idea about her friendliness.
Collin wishes the whole skin thing would just fade away. Gita Poonchwalla says anything is possible through prayer, so Collin recites the “Our Gana Mother of Fire,” then the “Yenu Krisnu Fills My Soul,” as she has taught him. Then he makes a silent plea: let Jane be gone this morning.
But when he goes down for breakfast, she’s still there.
Jane is the whitest person he has ever seen. Way past white, as if she’s from some realm where there’s no sun at all and the inhabitants produce their own eerie glow like fireflies.
Collin slides into his chair. He notes the paper towel folded like a triangle beside his plate. He smells Canadian bacon frying, French toast and coffee. Pots of different jams sit in the middle of the table.
It was never like this before Jane came. There was only the cereal box on the table, and Collin fetched his own milk, spoon, and bowl. Later his father would come yawning downstairs to open a Coke and unwrap a granola bar.
Jane lifts her eyes to Collin. “I’m still here,” she says, seeming to read his mind. Unfolding her paper towel, she smoothes it on her lap as if it’s fine linen. “Did you sleep well?”
Collin grunts, instead of saying No I didn’t, I had nightmares ‘cause you took my room.
The day after she arrived, his dad took her upstairs to offer her the middle bedroom. “Jane is going to stay a while,” he told Collin, who was trailing them suspiciously.
“Why?”
Brett paused on the landing. “Because she needs a place to stay until she…figures things out.”
Meanwhile Jane passed the middle room without looking in. Instead, she walked right into Collin’s room.
“Hey!” Collin trotted anxiously after her.
Inside his room, Jane was turning slowly in circles, a crazy smile on her face.
“This is my room!” She pointed to the wall opposite the window, where a bookcase stood. “My bed was there. I remember!”
“Jane used to live in this house,” Brett explained to Collin.
She added, “Perhaps if I sleep here, I shall remember more.”
“Collin, you don’t mind switching rooms,” his dad asked—told—him. “The other one’s bigger.”
“It smells gross!”
Jane stooped to examine the baseboard molding. “There was a mouse hole…gone now.” She turned again to Brett. “Yes, I am quite convinced this room is mine!”
So Collin moved into the stinky room, which didn’t smell any better after Brett vacuumed the whole upstairs and even cleaned the bathroom. Later she had him open up the weird box in the living room, which unfolded into some kind of keyboard instrument. They stood around mystified, and then Brett dragged Collin out with him to show Jane around town.
What wouldn’t he do for this complete stranger? “It’s like he’s voodoo’d,” Grandma would say. How long before Jane puts the spell on Collin?
He chants the “Our Gana” to himself for protection.
Across the table, Jane stares at him, her gaze like a chill hand around his heart. Suddenly the dream returns: the dark rock, the rising tide, the door, the choking, the fear—
“Dad!” Slipping off his chair, Collin tries to escape into the kitchen.
His father blocks the door, holding a plate of French toast and bacon. “What’s the matter?”
“Can I skip breakfast? I’m not hungry.”
“Sit down, Collin. We have a guest.”
He pushes away his fear and sits again, staring straight back at Jane. He’ll study her and make a report to Gita, who is very interested in evil.
Brett fetches the coffee. “Thank you,” Jane says. Then they’re all looking down at the food on their plates.
“I’ve never made French toast before. I got the recipe online. Wasn’t so hard. Collin, be polite and eat.”
The boy takes a bite, watching Jane from the corner of his eye. She picks up her fork and knife, cutting the toast into neat little squares.
“I also did a search on that keyboard contraption,” Brett continues. “It’s a seraphine. Does that ring a bell?”
She repeats the word quizzically, “Seraphine…no. I only remember playing it. Although I’ve forgotten how.”
“It works off pedals and bellows. They started making them around 1830. After twenty years everyone started switching to harmoniums.”
He’s showing off his brains, Collin thinks. His mom calls Brett a “propeller-head.”
“What are your plans today?” Brett asks Jane.
“I believe I shall walk a while.”
“I was thinking the same. I’ll get some work done, then we’ll go out.”
She’s meticulously dividing each square of toast in two. “I prefer to be on my own this day. When I walk alone, without design, my thoughts will sense a loosening of the reins, and wander where they will. It’s a most pleasant delinquency.”
Brett seems stuck for a response. She be buggin’ out, talkin’ at Websta shit, Collin thinks.
She continues subdividing her breakfast. His dad’s eyes are so slapped to her face, he doesn’t seem to notice that for all her motions she isn’t actually eating, the bits of toast reduced to a pile of pebbles she brushes to the side of her plate. Collin didn’t see her eat yesterday either. Doesn’t eat f
ood, bloodlessly pale…
All at once, Collin knows what she is. There’s a vampire in our house.
“Where’s your coffin?” he blurts.
His father looks shocked.
“I have none,” Jane laughs, disconcerted. “What a curious question.”
“Collin, you’re excused.”
Heading upstairs, he hears Brett apologizing to her: “Bizarre thing to say. Sometimes I can’t fathom that kid.”
Collin used to think things would get better between his dad and him. He liked that Brett sometimes came into the bedroom at night, lingering on the other side of the mosquito net, showing a father’s concern. He was impressed by Brett’s fingers flying over the computer keyboard as he created web pages. Brett even asked him to keep a secret—that he used to be a master hacker until one of his friends got arrested, though he still sometimes breaks into bank accounts for fun. Collin actually stopped hating his dad’s skinny arms and halting conversation.
It would have been easy to erase the gap. He could have just leaned his head on Brett’s shoulder, slipped his hand into his father’s, smiled up into his eyes, and reversed the misery of the summer; he held that power. Collin had planned on using it when he was ready. And then his father’s love, safe harbor, would have been his.
Then Collin could tell his own secrets. About Gita and the spiritual mission they’ve embarked upon together. About his only friend at school, Khansee, an adopted boy from Laos who speaks incomprehensible English, wears very dark glasses to avoid getting seizures from the fluorescent lights, and every year since third grade sends Collin a meticulously hand-drawn Valentine signed “A Mysterious Friend Ha Ha.” He could tell how when his mother’s out he likes to lay out her silk scarves on her bed and roll in them, then fold them perfectly afterwards and put them back in her drawer. He could even tell Brett about the drowning dreams.
But it’s too late. Now that Jane has arrived, his father is all hers, offering his neck to the demon.
Gita will know what to do.
BRETT FRETS ABOUT his son’s foul temper. Yesterday, when he asked Collin along to show Jane around town, the boy was sullen, dragging his feet and glowering the whole way.
Jane herself didn’t seem quite present as Brett pointed out the tabernacle, the maples, the stumps of elms dead from disease; the library, the car wash, the historical society, the nursing home. She nodded distantly, her gray eyes darting around, seeking something familiar—without success, it seemed.
A text came from his boss as they were wandering down Graynier Avenue. Brett angled his cell phone against the hazy sunlight to read the message. On impulse, he surreptitiously turned the camera on Jane, capturing her almond-shaped face, solemn eyes, mousy blond hair pulled back in a knot, as she stood against a backdrop of splashy green leaves and the vertical of a street sign.
Later, near the foot of Putman Hill, Brett suggested they turn back. But Jane’s attention was riveted on an empty field across the road. A banner in the grass read: “ST. PAUL’S FAIR AUGUST 9-11 GAMES RIDES RAFFLE.”
Jane turned to Brett and Collin, her brow furrowing. “Something was here in this field. Something of importance.”
She glanced this way and that, like a hound searching for a scent.
Collin emitted a huge sigh. “Can I go to Gita’s now?”
“No.” His father’s focus was on Jane, whose eyes filled with tears of frustration. He put his hand on her slender shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Fragments come to me and I don’t understand them. But they have a certainty—I know them to be true, as I know my name is Jane and I was born in Graynier. If they come not from my memory, then where?”
“Why can’t I go?” Collin piped up. “This is retarded.”
Brett wheeled on him sharply. “I’ll let you go when you show some basic courtesy toward our visitor.”
“She’s not a visitor if she’s staying,” Collin retorted.
HIS SON HAS a point. “How long do you plan on sleeping here?” Brett asks, watching Jane crowd the French toast rubble onto her fork and lift it to her mouth.
“Until I understand everything.” The fork lightly clicks against her teeth as her lips close over the food.
Women are forever taking advantage of him. This one won’t even provide straight answers to questions he has every right to know. Instead she gives charming evasions, which fascinate him, weakening his resolve. He will have to take a hard line. “You’re welcome for as long as you want, if you help out on the rent.”
She looks up eagerly. “I shall give you all I have.”
“You don’t need to give me everything…”
“I have 62 dollars.”
“That’s it?”
“Alas.”
Alas? Who talks this way? “Where are you from, anyway? I mean, before you came back here.”
Her light, cool hand covers his; her gray eyes are affectionate. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here, and I belong here, and with your kind forbearance, I’ll stay.”
Later, when Brett is washing the breakfast dishes, her words echo: your kind forbearance. She speaks like some ersatz “maiden” with a tankard at a Renaissance fair. Or someone out of an old book. His mind trails to high school sophomore English, when all the girls were sighing over Wuthering Heights, a book that made the boys go bulimic, and what was the other one? Jane Eyre. Another Jane.
After Collin goes to Gita’s and Jane goes for her walk, Brett has the house to himself. He calls the rental agent to ask who owned the house before the minister.
She has no idea. “Father Petrelli has lived there as long as I’ve been alive, and I’m thirty.”
No way is Jane that old. She couldn’t have been born in this house. What could be her motive to lie? (To gain entry; she needs a hideout.) She might be a runaway (but she looks a little too old to be a minor). There might be people looking for her. It would account for her secretiveness. Her name could be something other than Jane—for Jane Doe?
Brett goes into her bedroom, which she has left so tidy it could be unoccupied but for the pink duffel shoved deep under her bed. He gets down on all fours and pulls the bag out.
Emptying its contents onto the floor, he sifts through several pairs of underpants, cheap rayon skirts and blouses, a purple anorak, and a long nightgown, all with tags still attached from a Dress Depot outlet. Also a travel case with toothpaste, toothbrush, tampons, shampoo and body wash; a folded Massachusetts map; and three 20s and two singles: $62 exactly.
No credit cards or identification.
Inside the duffel he discovers a small zipper pocket in the inner lining, which holds a set of Toyota car keys on a ring. The ring’s medallion is a laminated photo of a lounging tabby cat, looking surprised by the camera flash.
Brett calls the nearest Dress Depot outlet; a helpful manager deciphers the location of Jane’s purchases through the store code on her price tags: Deer Run, Pennsylvania. He finds Deer Run on an internet map: it’s a small town off a major route in the Poconos. It might be her home, or a place she passed through on her way to Graynier.
The duffel has given him enough information to coax the truth out of her, if he goes about it carefully.
“I WAS THINKING of taking Collin on a trip to the Poconos. Do you know that area?”
“No.”
“Well, but have you ever been through there?”
“No.” Jane is back from her walk, dusty and depleted, gulping down the glass of orange juice Brett has brought into the parlor. They sit together in the breeze from the standing fan.
Thinking of the cat photo on the key chain, Brett says, “Maybe Collin needs a pet. What would you want, a kitten maybe?”
Her eyes smile over the rim of the glass. “I should want a little mouse. To live in the wall, and visit me sometimes.”
“You never had a cat?”
“No.” Suspicion flickers across her face. He’s pushing too hard. He changes the subject. “Looks like you got a touch of sunburn,�
�� he remarks. “I’ll buy you a hat at the mall. They have a lot of nice shops. Do you like Dress Depot?”
“Is that a shop?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
“Truly not.” But her expression is cagey. He’s aware the clock is running out on his inquest.
“Anyway, you should see the mall. Want to drive my car? You have a license, right?”
She frowns. “I have never driven a car.”
“You could get you a learner’s permit and I’ll teach you.”
“No, thank you.” She rises from the sofa. “I shall take my bath now.”
After Jane goes upstairs, it comes to him: she’s Amish. There’s a community in Pocono country where they speak in an anachronistic dialect and don’t use cars but horse-drawn buggies. My mind senses a loosening of the reins, she’d said.
He grows excited as all the pieces come together: she has just escaped from a culture rigidly stuck in the past. She had to ditch the homespun clothes and buy new outfits from Dress Depot, so she could blend into the outside world.
He would solve the riddle of the Toyota keys later.
Are her people out looking for her? Would they have notified the police? Or do the Amish have their own police? How long before they catch up with her? How long to reach Graynier from Pennsylvania in a horse and buggy?
How long does he have before someone takes her away?
He can’t pry further into her secret or he will lose her. She is hiding out with Brett because instinctively she knows he is the kind of man who will protect her. And so he will. In time she may trust him with the truth. Maybe even come to love him.
He will hold her delicate, pliant body in his arms, childish and chaste. My own Jane. Mine.
Jane Was Here Page 4
