by Mira Gibson
Ad hoc carpentry tools hung on nails and wooden posts at the far wall above his dad’s work table, which was lined with rusty basins, coils of dried out rope, and other random items—hand-held gardening tools, the innards of dissected VHS players, relics of his mother's pottery, a dehydrated Christmas wreath with a faded red bow, all cast in soft, tungsten light.
For some reason the table was where his gaze landed every time he set foot in the shed, but he turned left for his bicycle, an old Huffy Rawhide, powder-coated in robin’s egg blue with tarnished fenders and Belleville handlebars arching back like ram horns. The bike was good enough for his route even though it was as old as his father.
But this morning it didn’t look quite right, and his foggy brain was slow to pinpoint why.
It had the posture of an obedient dog, seated and eager for a treat, and as the cobwebs cleared from his mind he noticed the reason. There was something wrong with the rear wheel. Handling it, he realized the tire had been slashed, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was also bent out of shape, causing a number of spokes to have snapped from the rim like spiders' legs.
“Fucking hell, Roberta,” he muttered. “Use your words.”
As he straightened up from his bike, not quite ready to believe he’d have to walk his route, Quinton wondered just what in the hell he might have done to warrant this level of destruction. He’d been checking in on her, stopping by most mornings after his route and sneaking over with leftovers after dinner—pot roast, spaghetti and meatballs, his mom’s homemade gnocchi, Roberta's demands, Bring a liter of Coke and his response, She’ll notice that, she’s been asking where all the soda’s gone and her insistence, Just bring it, Quinton! Loyally, day after day and night after night, he'd placed the items on the porch—offering libations to an angry God who rarely granted him with what he prayed hardest for: her genuine affection.
Roberta was a Goddess.
Towering over him, her feline eyes boring through him which stirred up all kinds of thrill and terror in his chest, she would stomp around, pacing the shore behind her house whenever he displeased her. It was so easy for her to ignore the effect she had on him. A bull’s spirit trapped inside fluid elegance—fury mixed with refinement, cruelty wrapped in cultivated beauty—was how she looked.
But Quinton hadn’t done anything wrong.
He turned the light off and closed the orange door on his way out then started through the woods for his bundle of newspapers, which the Laconia Daily Sun truck had deposited at the end of his driveway as they had done every morning since his hire.
His sack was resting limply at the front door so he grabbed it, tossing the canvas strap over his shoulder, then padded down the drive and collected the bundled newspapers wrapped in twine, shoving it in the sack and setting off for Roberta’s house, which was half a mile down Moulton.
Today was going to suck.
He needed his driver’s license and a car, but a year stood between him and making that dream a reality.
The landscape gradually brightened, sunlight sparkling off mist, as he made his way. Cutting through the Maples that shielded the King’s house from the road, he spotted Roberta, ass up in the planters, digging.
She’d been doing a lot of that recently. Ever since Maude had died, Roberta had become bizarrely obsessed with the dirt. At times she was frantic and so focused she couldn’t spare a second to acknowledge him. Others she searched about lazily, digging and tearing up plants, if that’s what she was doing—searching. For what, he couldn’t imagine.
“Roberta.”
She was flinging dirt behind her like a dog.
Louder, he said, “Roberta.”
Standing, twisting, but not turning completely around, she glared at him from the corner of her eye. “What?”
He gaped at her like duh. “You annihilated my bicycle.”
“Keep your voice down,” she ordered, stalking towards him after glancing at the second floor windows.
“Well, what the fuck?”
Her eyes turned innocent and he almost didn’t have the nerve to break it down for her, the consequences of his newborn burden. He held his head high, in part because she was that much taller, but also to affirm he was no wimp.
“It’s going to take me literally eight times as long to get through my route, which means half my papers will be delivered late, after my customers leave for work in fact. Which means I’ll get complaints, which means my boss is going to ream me out, which means I might get fired, which means I won’t be able to save up for-” Fast sip of oxygen, then he barreled through the rest of his point. “A car, which means our long term plan is going to get pushed off. Don’t you get that?”
He was breathing heavily. The adrenaline rushing through his veins was almost more than he could bear. The shoulder strap on his sack was cutting into his shoulder and making him stoop so he shoved it off. It fell hard to the grass.
“What’d I do?”
“You talked to my mom.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
He gaped as though it might fool her then let the pantomime go when she gaped right back at him mockingly. He tried to explain. “You weren’t around.”
Folding her arms, which jostled her chest in a way he couldn't resist peaking at, and raising her brows as if to challenge his poor defense, she gave Quinton the distinct impression she wanted him to come clean and come clean fully.
“All right," he began. "Obviously you were around and you know. She was out here. What was I supposed to do? Run off? She saw me and said hi. She just wanted to find out how you were doing.”
“So she asked you? She didn’t ask me. She could any time she wants. It’s not like either of us do anything except avoid each other in that house.”
“Well, I didn’t say anything. You didn’t have to total my bicycle.”
She leveled her gaze on him, expression neutral, then her brows went flat. Finally, she said, “Sorry,” but her tone implied a real apology would degrade her.
Sighing, he told her it was fine.
“You can use my dad’s bike.”
“No way,” he blurted out.
“He doesn’t use it. He probably forgot he has it.”
Quinton had encountered Charlie King only a handful of times, but each instance, though brief, had been more nerve wracking than the last and had haunted him for days. Charlie hadn’t said much during those encounters, but when he had, his booming voice, deep and piercing, shocked Quinton’s heart out of rhythm and sent him trembling.
The first had been when he caught Quinton in Roberta’s room. He’d kicked the door in and barked, Hey! In that split second, Quinton had gotten an outsiders glimpse of the scene—Roberta lounging on her back, her hand under her head, the curves and lines of her body melting sensuously into the bedspread though she was clothed, Quinton perched at the foot of the bed, magnetized, leaning towards her, on fire to be painting her toenails. With Charlie glaring at him, Quinton had kept praying I look gay, I look gay, don’t I? This is pretty gay, right? But Charlie hadn’t thought so. He’d lunged at him, grabbed him by the shirt, and the next thing Quinton knew he was careening down the stairs then sprinting home.
The last time he had crossed paths with Charlie was behind the house when he was swimming with Roberta. She'd stretched her bikini top under the breasts and Quinton hoisted himself onto the raft to get a better look at her as she floated on her back—she liked to tease him like that, or torture him as the case might be. Then he'd heard a shot. Quinton had flinched, pissing himself and falling into the water, as Charlie straightened his aim, poised to shoot at him again. He hadn’t dared collect his clothes on the shore. He’d swam all the way home, holding his breath as long as he could and only coming up for air when his lungs started screaming.
“Come on. It’s in the basement,” she said, pulling him to get him walking then hooking her arm around his neck when he did.
He half expected a noogie to follow, but she only pit
ched him forward with a playful shove, as they started round the back of the house.
“You need to change out of that thing or wash it at the very least,” he said, eyeing her red dress. “You smell ripe.”
“Shut up.” She ducked under the staircase behind the house and opened the basement door. “The washer’s fucked. The hose is cracked and we can’t run it without flooding the place.”
Quinton waited for her in the entryway, as she padded through the dark then emerged, rolling a mountain bike. At first glance, the seat looked way too high, but he could adjust it.
Taking the handlebars, he relieved her of having to push it to the driveway where he’d left his sack.
“Who was that lady that was here yesterday?”
“Amanda’s replacement.”
“Social services?” he asked, as he chucked a newspaper at the front porch. He had decent aim and it landed right in front of the door. “Is that going to fuck everything up?”
“They'll get to her,” she stated bleakly.
"Shit, Roberta," he said, his voice a thread.
"They get to everyone."
“Then don't talk to her. Is she making you talk?”
She screwed her face up, considering. “Not really. I doubt she cares much. She wanted to know about the guns.”
“What’d you say?”
“I didn’t let her in the house. Told her no one was home. It didn't take much to get her to leave,” she said darkly.
Though he knew the topic of Maude was off limits, “What does she make of Maude?” slipped out anyway.
Her expression hardened and she clenched her jaw so Quinton deflected, hauling his sack over his shoulder and finding something interesting about the mountain bike.
Then she said, “There's something wrong with her. Gertrude." She pronounced the woman's name like it was an infectious disease, which wasn't the volatile response he'd anticipated. "She doesn't stand a chance."
“I think you should tell her.”
“And what’s that going to do?”
“Maybe you could stay at my house until you graduate.”
“Your folks can’t stand me,” she countered, dismissing the idea, and when he accidentally waited too long to insist she was wrong, she added, "Like I said."
She held his gaze, both of them silently confirming what the whole town thought of her, that she was a tramp, demented, damaged beyond repair—a carnival of abnormal behavior overpowering this side of the lake.
“I should get going,” he told her.
The sun had risen over the water behind the house, casting long shadows where they stood.
“Have a drink.”
“Christ, Roberta. It’s barely six.”
But she was already dragging him up the porch steps and didn’t release him until she got to the keg.
“I can’t believe there’s any beer left the rate we’ve been drinking it,” he commented, as she pumped it and filled a red cup.
“I swapped it out,” she said, handing the cup to him then pouring one for herself.
“How’d you pay for it?”
“My dad has a tab at the liquor store.”
She drank hers down like she’d just crossed a dessert then angled the nozzle in her cup for round two, as Quinton stared at the foamy surface of his beer, dreading this form of bonding.
“At least tell that woman about the funeral.”
Correcting him, she said, “The party, you mean.”
“Didn’t she ask about the keg? Didn’t she see it?”
“Something’s off with her,” Roberta said easily, but then quickly scowled at the fact he hadn’t taken so much as a sip.
“All right, all right.” Choking the bitter, warm liquid down, he drained his glass, grimacing all the while in such a way that beer trickled from the corners of his mouth. “Christ, that’s gross.”
“She acted like the funeral was her own personal debutante ball.”
“That’s why I don’t get why you’re wearing that.”
The alcohol hit him and he was suddenly light headed and swaying. Or maybe he wasn’t swaying. Maybe that was the porch.
“I’m just throwing it in her face. Who wears a red cocktail dress to a funeral?”
“Your mother, evidently.”
“Remember her teachers?” Roberta was smiling strangely, all loosened up with booze. “A bunch of fourth graders running around, not quite getting it. And their teachers wrangling them, casting sideways glances at my mom as she paraded around the living room, martini glass in hand, oblivious to how horrified they were.”
Quinton didn’t want to divulge the raw feeling her mother had given him at the funeral, the quavering anxiety he'd felt when alone with her that had been far worse than his encounters with Charlie. Maude’s death had elicited in Zhana a queer need to celebrate. She'd seemed strangely euphoric, a butterfly emerging from her cocoon after a painstaking metamorphosis. Or maybe that was how she grieved, but if it was, it was dark.
Setting his empty cup on the railing, he offered, “I can come back after my route,” though it was a given.
“Do it. We’ll go for a swim.”
She draped her arms around his shoulders. He had a buzz going and because of it she felt like a dream. The same one he’d gotten in the habit of conjuring each night as he drifted to sleep. However, as soon as he reached for her, reciprocating, hands nearing her hips, she urged him back and her chiseled features hardened like a warning.
He crossed the porch and when he passed the newspaper, he gave it a little kick so it’d be tucked against the door then padded down the steps. After collecting his sack, he adjusted the bicycle seat down, loosening the pinch bolt on the seatpost and sliding the seat with a twist into the frame. As soon as he secured it, he felt eyes on him and knew it wasn’t Roberta. Someone was peering at him from the second floor windows. He sensed it, but was too scared to look.
Swinging his leg over, he hopped on the bicycle then took off riding through the warm morning, its air crisp and filling his lungs.
His tires hummed over asphalt until he turned up Mr. Livingston’s driveway, which was bumpy with ruts and compacted dirt. The shocks were stellar and he didn’t have to stand on the pedals to save his ass like usual. When he reached the walkway, he pulled a U-turn without stopping, chucking a paper at the front door, then pedaled onward as fast as he could as though the harder he worked his muscles forcing a sweat, the quicker he’d rid his system of alcohol.
It was an hour before he was rounding the Opechee Bay Reservoir, crossing over the bridge that marked the last leg of his route. Sweat drenched, the canvas sack limply flapping at his side, he turned up Opechee Street and grabbed one of the few newspapers he had left, ready for the Wong’s. Their eldest daughter, Jennifer, a prim girl in the grade above him, who was too smart for her own good, had gotten into a nasty habit of pretending to sunbathe on a grassy patch at the end of the driveway. Hoping to catch him, Quinton suspected. Not that she had anything nice to say. Generally, she just glared at him, while lying on her towel in the shade so that her porcelain skin never tanned. She like to shout rudely at him, things about Roberta he’d heard so many times he was both deaf to it and highly sensitive.
He spied her in her usual spot so he chucked the paper and hightailed it out of there, turning up the street and wincing as she called out, “Quinton and Roberta, perverted in a tree! F. U. C. K. I. N. G.” then cackled like no other Asian girl he’d ever heard.
The remaining houses were quick and painless, and soon he was riding home along Moulton.
He slowed up as he came to the King’s driveway, planting the rubber soles of his heels into the road and scanning for Roberta through the trees. Unable to spot her, he figured he had a few minutes for breakfast before she would notice he should’ve returned so he kicked off again.
As he arched around Mr. Livingston’s house, a patch of red beyond the tree line caught his eye. Roberta, hands dark with dirt, dress tattered and sloping off o
ne shoulder, was walking at a staggering pace along a low stone wall, old Colonial property dividers hidden through the forest. She looked dazed, zombie-like, her eyes unfocused and lolling as though she couldn’t make sense of where she was, yet she seemed decisive about where she was heading, which was into Mr. Livingston’s yard.
If she’d been wandering onto anyone else’s property, he would’ve intervened, but Jake Livingston was not someone to mess with.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t so much a home office as it was a hovel.
Sun-faded and dust-tarnished, the wood paneled walls were eroding, if not behind bookshelves and framed photos, placards and porcelain plates depicting landscapes and wildlife. Every inch of wood was covered with mementos from his ancestors, grandparents, and the many generations of Livingstons that had lived in this house.
The office smelled of musty books, but that’s what Jake liked about it. Books comforted him. Relaxing his eyes from his computer monitor, he glanced at one of the shelves, studying the row of stiff spines—some sitting vertically, packed tightly on the shelves, others fanning sideways. They breathed wisdom—facts and figures, statistics and demographics. Interspersed between the hard covers were stolen criminal files that looked like arms reaching out as if to say, come back, I have more to tell you. The history of a town with too many secrets, the vast divide between what had been printed and what had actually occurred, was what these walls wouldn’t let him forget.
His desk was no better. Overwrought with notepads full of research and drafts of article copy marked in red—ones which he knew his editor wouldn’t print, not yet, not until he got proof—he barely had any surface space left. Every inch was covered with precarious pillars, each stacked haphazardly and threatening to spill.
His behemoth computer, or the eye of the storm as he’d come to refer to it, glared at him, cursor blinking impatiently, as Jake sat motionless, wrapping his head around the angle he’d like to take, the trajectory of his article, and how he might get away with writing his hunch even though he hadn’t a shred of evidence.
