Other Shepards

by Adele Griffin

  Annie swirls into her coat, an oversized linen blazer that is too lightweight to be of much use in March, then she grabs her knapsack and is gone, clattering out the kitchen door, the clop of her shoes fading as she walks down the steps and through the alleyway.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that window open,” I remark as we carry our mugs and dishes to the sink.

  “Such a funny lady,” Geneva says. “Although I kind of doubt she had an appointment anywhere; her watch was way off. She was just finished being here is all.”

  “Most painters keep their own schedules,” I say. “I wonder how Dad even heard about her? Maybe she’s from the art department of the University?”

  “Maybe. How old do you think she is?”

  “Early thirties, I’d guess. She acts younger, though, like a kid. The way she was so interested in our school, asking us all those questions. Except for she’s wrong about Elizabeth and Kevin and John not being our real family. That was mean.”

  “She didn’t say it the way you heard it. You never like when people aren’t talking polite enough. Same as Mom.” Geneva steps closer to the window, and a breeze catches a wave of her heavy brown hair. Her mouth is a sealed smile, and her fingers—usually knotted together or jammed under her arms to protect her from stray germs—gently press against the outline of her jaw as she leans out, breathing the spring air. It is not a Geneva thing to do, considering she often refers to breezes as drafts.

  “You okay?”

  “I feel good.” Geneva’s voice is soft and confiding. “This afternoon wasn’t so bad after all, in fact it makes me think …”

  Only she loses her thought to the fresh air, stretching herself deeper out the window and letting the wind smooth over her face.

  three

  the other shepards

  “SO CLEAN AND SMOOTH.” Brett raises his wine glass and tilts it. The liquid inside catches an identical shade of light from the chandelier.

  “Like springtime,” Carla adds. At the other end of the table, Mom nods and raises her own glass.

  “Cheers to spring,” she says. Dad picks up his glass. Geneva and I reach for our water goblets, and I make a silent bet. If you can count to one hundred in a single breath, then baby Freddie will wake up and you can be excused to take care of him.

  “And to the ides of March, and Lydia’s fifty-sixth,” Dad adds. Clink, clink. Geneva’s heavy water goblet tips dangerously. I take a huge breath and start counting, one, two, three …

  The vase has been presented, air kisses exchanged. We brought out and unrolled the vellum paper, too, and explained our choices for what Geneva calls the “birds of paradise” design. Mom looks surprised by the idea of painting a mural in the kitchen. Her face is quizzical but guarded. She stares across the table at Dad and mouths secret sentences to him, something she would not normally do because she considers it impolite.

  “This is a big project,” Dad says to me with a funny, freeze-dried smile after viewing the sketch selection.

  “Annie’s a professional artist.”

  “You girls seem very excited.”

  “She says we can help. She says she’ll be the supervisor.”

  “Ah.” He winks at me, a wink that seems filled with conspiracy, and I am struck by the idea that perhaps Annie is not an artist after all. Maybe Dad has hired another psychiatrist to try to help Geneva.

  My sister has been in and out of therapy ever since she could crawl. Holidays are often recalled as they coincided with Geneva’s phobias and compulsions. ‘Was that the Thanksgiving that Geneva had to floss her teeth ten times a day because she got fixated on tartar?’ ‘Remember, it was the same summer that Geneva had to line up everybody’s shoes in a row before she could go to sleep.’ The occasional bouts with counseling never seem to do anything to change her, but the parents like to get updates on her psyche from time to time.

  Annie the undercover therapist. The plan makes sense, especially in light of the parents’ subdued and slightly mortified approach to Geneva’s problems.

  “She knows a lot about art. She’s going to transform the kitchen,” I gasp, trying not to lose too much air, while my fingers keep count—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—and I wink back at Dad.

  “We almost never use the kitchen,” Mom says in an explaining, slightly ashamed way to Carla. “I think it’s a hint that the girls are trying to get more home cooking out of me.” Suddenly it occurs to me that Mom might not want the kitchen mural.

  “It’ll be beautiful,” I promise, but Mom’s answering smile does not erase the concern from her eyes.

  “We’re going to help Annie every afternoon.” Geneva lifts her eyes from her slice of birthday cake as she speaks. Her sudden connection to the table is jarring. Even the usually dignified Carla looks startled as Geneva starts talking about paint primers and chalk outlines.

  After she is finished no one says a word; it is that shocking. Then Brett clears his throat and begins telling the parents about his job.

  The odorless tulips block my view. I stretch my neck and stare giraffelike over the leaves, trying to slide Brett’s face back in time, into its firm, seventeen-year-old shape. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two …

  “I see you, Peeper.” Brett grins at me, interrupting himself a moment from talking about how he expects to be made full associate at the bank by next year. He has movie-star teeth, white as new sneakers. His other, real teeth all got smashed out long ago, the night Kevin’s jeep flipped. Brett’s entire jaw had to be rewired. You can clearly see the scar from where his bottom teeth ripped through the skin of his chin just below his lip. The brambly pink etching of scar tissue helps his chipmunk face look tough, even mysterious, like a Man with a Past.

  In photographs of teenage Brett, he is a tender ugly duckling, flanked by my two grinning, handsome-and-know-it brothers. It always seems strange to me that not only was Brett the one person to survive that night, but between his false teeth and his dashing pirate’s scar he actually emerged from the accident somewhat improved. A poisonous thought, Mom would say. Not that I’d ever mention it out loud.

  Baby Freddie, please cry! My breath is beginning to run out. Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight. Distract yourself.

  “It’s hard to believe the years have passed so quickly,” Mom is commenting. “And now you, Brett, with your family, and about to be named full associate. Time marches on, doesn’t it, Quentin?”

  My father’s eyes are dark, dry raisins, half-buried in the gentle pleats of his skin. My mother’s eyes are glassy with a liquid that never spills. They stare across the dining room table, holding each other in private memories.

  Freddie must be sleeping soundly. Fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one … forget it. Breath burps from my lungs with a phof! and Dad looks over at me.

  “You and your sister are excused from the table,” he says. I smile; I won my bet after all.

  Geneva plunks down her water, bolts up from her chair, and motors out of the dining room and up the stairs so fast that the liquid is still shifting back and forth in her goblet when we hear her bedroom door slam. That was rude, Mom will reprimand her later, not to say good night to our guests. I know Mom wants me to linger to make up for Geneva. And so I stay, although Mom’s next sentence makes me wish that I had disappeared while I had the opportunity.

  “Holland, I meant to tell you. I ran into Angie Hill this afternoon.” Blech—Mrs. Hill. The only woman on the planet known to have given birth to a night crawler, now age fourteen and a freshman at Bishop Brown High School, which must have a relaxed policy on admitting night crawlers.

  “Oh, really?” I smile politely and hope Mom is not leading up to a mention of Aaron. No such luck. “She told me that Aaron wasn’t going to fencing camp, and so they’ll all be down at the shore this summer. They’re renting on Bayberry, one road over from us, during the same two weeks that we’re there. Isn’t that fun?”

  “Yes, I guess, except that Aaron and me—”

  “Aaron and I.” />
  “Aaron and I aren’t exactly as good friends as we were when we were little kids,” I say, remembering last Christmas, when the Hills came over and Aaron, as a kind of nonfunny joke, kept calling me his “kissing cousin” and tried to drag me under the mistletoe. Both sets of parents had laughed indulgently, and I’d finally let him plant one on my cheek. His gooey lips slid like a worm across my skin, and that’s when I privately had rechristened Aaron.

  “No,” Mom corrects my opinion. “You forget how well the two of you get along, because you don’t spend enough time together anymore. Remember that game, that unicorn game you both made up on the merry-go-round in Central Park? You two loved that game. It was all Angie and I could do to pull you off those horses.” There is laughter from every mouth at the table except mine.

  “That was in second grade,” I say, annoyed. “But sure, I guess it’ll be nice to have Aaron around this summer.” The dutiful daughter. Mom smiles and I know I have won her favor.

  “It was awesome to see you both, Brett and Carla. And if you ever want me to baby-sit Freddie, I’d like to. Anytime.” I circle the table, careful not to be the bluebird of Ickness, no kissing and hugging anyone too hard, although Brett’s aftershave is wonderful and spicy. “Happy Birthday, Mom. Good night, everyone.” Mom is still smiling. A job well done: not too abrupt, not too straggly, just enough sweetness.

  “She’s very dear,” Carla says after I have left the dining room and am walking up the stairs.

  “Holland, thankfully, does not cause us a moment’s worry.” Dad’s voice is loud from wine, and I stop, not breathing, a hand squeezing each banister. “Responsible, and she’s smart as a whip. She did the most extraordinary science project last semester on human cell division. The diorama’s still in the den, if you want to have a look. Meiosis, mitosis, mitochondria … She made the vacuoles out of hair gel and sandwich baggies. Pretty clever, eh?”

  “A head for science, just like her old man.” Brett’s voice. Then Dad again, even louder.

  “I’m going to try to get her a summer internship at the University. I’ve started on the paperwork. I don’t anticipate a problem. High honors in science on her report card every …”

  I run up the stairs, suddenly conscious of my eavesdropping, and yet tingling with anger. I had no idea about a summer internship, or that Dad had taken my science project this seriously. It is just like my father, though, to plan my life behind my back and then spring it on me. I’ll have to figure out a countermaneuver, maybe start looking into summer jobs or camps. What could be worse than spending my vacation hunched over a Bunsen burner? Just because I’m good in science does not mean I like it.

  Baby Freddie is snoring itty-bitty baby snores from inside the Port-o-Crib that Carla set up in Dad’s study. I bend to whisper good night and catch a scent of his skin. I can’t ever remember baby Geneva smelling so fresh. I always imagine us both born slightly dried and crumbled, like cheddar cheese, prewrapped in musty hand-me-down nightgowns. No, we could never have been like Freddie, so new and soft and thoughtless.

  I run a finger over the downy fold of baby Freddie’s neck and listen to his breathing, a lispy lullaby that draws my eyelids closed. I better start my French verbs. Geneva stayed in the kitchen today because of my bet, and I never break my bets. It’s not the kind of risk I take.

  Late that night, I wake to the sound of my name. I rise from my bed and pad across the hall to Geneva’s room. She sits bolt upright, all sleep-shadowed eyes and sleep-prickly hair.

  “Another dream?” I ask.

  “It was for real. I keep telling you. They were here.”

  “Tell me again,” I whisper, sliding onto the edge of her bed. My just-awakened body bends awkwardly, and I crook my fingers over my cold toes.

  “Geneva?” Mom’s thin silhouette outlines the doorway. In the darkness, dressed in her slippers and robe, she looks more frail than by daylight, when she is outfitted for work in one of her neutral suits and knotted silk scarves.

  “She had a bad dream about Elizabeth and John and Kevin,” I tell her. “She’s fine now.”

  “But they mustn’t ever be a bad dream,” Mom chides us mildly. “They’re angels now, watching over you girls and protecting you. Your brothers and sister love you both so dearly.”

  “They stood in my room and they told me …,” the quick, warning shift of Mom’s body makes Geneva hesitate, “that they were in heaven with God and all the archangels and they miss us. But heaven has lots of sunsets and they’re very happy.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like a bad dream,” Mom says. “To me, that sounds like a very nice visit from your family.”

  “Visiting hours are over,” Geneva mumbles, her voice too small for Mom to hear.

  “I’ll stay with her,” I say. “Don’t worry about us. Get some sleep.”

  “You’re a love, Holland. Good night, girls.”

  Mom closes the door quickly, as if I suddenly might change my mind. Geneva’s nocturnal visions lost their punch years ago, when we realized they could not be cured except by the nightly sedatives prescribed by our family psychiatrist, Dr. Bushnell, which left us with a Geneva so groggy that she could barely put her shoes on the right feet the next morning. When she was taken off the pills, the dreams resumed. “Just leave her” was Dr. Bushnell’s next piece of advice. “Like a baby who must learn to stop crying. Just leave her and eventually she will sleep through the night.”

  Mom and Dad seemed to have appreciated this suggestion, and now it is rare for them to respond to Geneva. Maybe they do not even hear her anymore, since she only calls my name. But to me, Geneva’s voice is as harsh as a dog whistle, claiming me from anywhere, forcing me to run and fetch and stay. Sometimes, she has admitted, she calls out to me for no other reason than to make sure that I am here, that I will come.

  “You need a bath?” I ask. “Would water fix you?”

  She doesn’t answer, just pushes out from under her blankets and thumps her feet on the floor.

  “Shhh.”

  “Who cares?” She sniffs. “Who hears?”

  “Shhh,” I repeat. I follow her out to the hall and into the bathroom. Geneva is not modest; she sheds her nightgown and underpants while I run the faucet, then sinks cautiously into the tub, slowly allowing the steam and hot water to envelop her.

  “Bubbles, please,” she yawns. I fetch the bottle from under the sink and pour a trickle of purple slime into the stream.

  “Tell me,” I say. “You haven’t dreamt about them in a while.”

  “It’s real, Holland, more real than dreaming. I could see them.” Geneva looks at me with eyes syrupy from the heat. “They walked into my room and they seemed so regular, just like in their pictures. They were all wearing jeans. Kevin had on a green windbreaker. John said, ‘Wake up, Neeve,’ which is strange, now that I think about it, because nobody calls me that. Except for it seemed normal.” She pauses. “Then Elizabeth said, ‘You’re in my dreams, too, Neeve.’”

  “And?” I try not to sound too interested, but my inner eye becomes fixed on this image. I watch their shadows jag across Geneva’s wall. Their faces flicker in the glow of Geneva’s night light. The shells of their jackets are damp with salt water. I can smell the spearmint crackle of their chewing gum, see the spritz of freckles on Kevin’s nose. “Wake up,” John whispers. I shudder. For a moment it is as if my sister’s dream has dissolved into my own consciousness.

  “And nothing. That was the end.”

  I turn off the water and sit down on the closed toilet seat. “Dreams are easy to explain,” I begin in a ponderous voice like a PBS narrator. “A dream is like a garbage disposal of things that happen in your day, which get mashed up and pushed through your sleeping mind. The nights Brett comes over are kind of upsetting because he makes us think about Elizabeth and the boys, and how they can’t be with us.”

  “I guess,” she says, nodding. Her wet hair pastes to her shoulders like flattened threads of brown cotton. Surrounded by
bubbles and light, she looks more sweet and agreeable than she did a few minutes ago. “It’s been a while since I wanted to see them.”

  “Aha. See what you said? You want to see them, so your mind makes up a story.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Want to see them?”

  “Of course I do,” I answer, “but it’s an impossible wish. I mean, I’ve never even seen the mayor, and half the neighborhood’s spotted him.”

  “That’s because you need me to show you where to look,” Geneva says. “My eyes work better than yours.”

  I ignore her remark, moving my seat to kneel on the bath mat, and I sink a washcloth into the warm water, spreading it over her curled, spiny back. “Come on, let’s wash you up so we can get back to bed.”

  “Everything would be different if they were here. Imagine if they had been sitting with us at the table tonight, helping Mom celebrate.”

  “If the other Shepards had been here tonight,” I say lightly, “there wouldn’t be room for us at the table.” Although she nods in agreement, Geneva’s arms tighten around her knees.

  “Holland, do you remember when we were little, how we made up that imaginary friend, Nonie, who lived under the dining room table?”

  “Sure I do.” She had been our secret friend for years. I had been upset when eventually I grew too big to squeeze under the table to play. “She liked to eat your vegetables, and once you got mad at Uncle Nelson for accidentally kicking her.”

  “See, that’s how it was tonight. Like visits from imaginary friends.” Geneva grabs around for the washcloth, dunks it, and presses it over her face. “Only they didn’t have to leave so quick,” she says, her voice not so muffled that I can’t hear the fierceness in it.