Nick’s silence terrified her.
“Nick? Answer me —”
He only hushed her, drawing the ancient curtain closed but peering through a crack.
“What is it?”
“There’s a man out there, too.”
“Jesus Christ. You’re messing with me. Nick.” She paused but couldn’t bear the silence. “What man? Quit moving it!”
Nick was still fussing with the curtain, drawing attention to them.
“What man?” She threw a pillow to stop him from advertising, but he lifted the other arm to block it.
“I almost thought for a minute that it was Ethan.”
Was he joking? “I guess I deserve it since this was my stupid idea.” Was that supposed to be a joke? “But you are messing with me, right?”
“He’s wearing a costume or something. Ethan would do that. He likes drama, doesn’t he?”
Nick looked back at her, and she was glad he couldn’t see her eyes. Couldn’t read her face.
“I thought maybe it’s some local kid playing a prank, but it could be my brother. Couldn’t it?” Nick let the curtain fall. He came and knelt by her. “Did you tell him we’d be here, and this is some trick to screw with poor Nick? Because I’m all set with that.”
She shook her head, desperately. “Of course not!”
“I don’t like this stuff, and you both know it.”
Both? “So why’d you bring us here in the first place?”
Oblivious to the stranger outside, the baying dogs, the terror that had stopped her blood and cast everything into perspective — terrible, jagged, real — he snarled, “I brought us here? Me?”
“It was your idea to come,” she insisted. “The first time.” Nick, please. “Stop looking at me like that —”
“Like what?”
“Like that —”
He grabbed her chin and held it hard, painfully. “Is that Ethan out there screwing with me?”
No. She shook her head, mostly to get out of his grasp. “No, Nick.”
He slumped and laid his cheek on the bed beside her, like someone too tired to move, and now his voice sounded muffled, far away. “Maybe you wish it was, though, Megs? Maybe you’d rather be here with Ethan —”
She kicked off the sheet, stood up, and pushed past him to the window. The dogs, wherever they were, had fallen quiet. “This isn’t the time,” she reminded him, drawing the curtain aside a hair. An inch. Enough to see what Nick had seen, the figure of a dark-haired young man in tights and short pants and a white, puffy movie-pirate shirt. A costume. He was tall and lean like Ethan (and Nick). But not like. It was too dark to really see his face, but he stood so still, and looked up so attentively, that she shuddered. She almost pitied him. What did he want? Whatever it was, he wanted it bad. What was he seeing?
“Nick —”
But Nick wasn’t there. Not on the bed or beside it or anywhere. She called his name as if he were her child and she’d lost him in the mall, then stood with a hand over her mouth, regretting it. Ridiculous. She noticed a candleholder with a crooked stump on it, snatched it off the mantle, and dug in the pocket of her jeans for matches. Ethan had given her the matches, too. She fumbled, feeling the broken cigarette, the tobacco on her fingers, but no matches.
At last she found them, struck and struck again. The candle flared up blue, then settled into a white flame with a blue center, like a narcissus. Is that the flower? Jesus. She was thinking about flowers. Flowers made her think about funerals. Meg winced at the new, leaping shadows.
Then Nick was in the doorway, looking gaunt and strange. He was holding up a hand mirror, a woman’s mirror with tarnished metalwork on the handle. “Look at yourself,” he ordered. “Look.” He crowded her back against the wall beside the glass doors, and the heavy curtain bumped her candle. The light wavered, and the candle fell, rolling out of view. It was dark again, and she couldn’t see his face.
“Look at what? I can’t see you, Nick. Don’t do that. Get off me.”
Though his body was weirdly rigid and apart, he’d laid his head on her shoulder. He was mouthing something against her shoulder, his cheek resting heavy against her shoulder bone. Only that cheek and his faint movements alerted her that he was there, that close, and she felt her own sadness welling up, rearing up like a sea monster from the dark.
“I tried to tell you —”
He was crying. She couldn’t stand that. It made her sick.
“Say it.”
“Nick,” she gasped. “You have to stop.” She wanted to hurt him. Make it stop. She shoved him back, and while his hands and arms and torso remained apart, stiff as a tree, his head stayed on her shoulder, attached to her like one of those wretched Siamese twins who have to eat and breathe and sleep and raise their children together because their flesh rules — helpless as a clamp, a trap.
“Say it—” He was a terrible, sobbing stranger and the person she knew best in the world. Well enough to know she couldn’t hold him, couldn’t make it better, though he might want her to, though she might want to. It was too late for that, and this made her angry. She pushed him again, hard this time, so he couldn’t use her as a crutch anymore, couldn’t lay his weight against her.
The dogs were at it again, near enough to the window to stop her heart, if she had a heart. I have no heart. He was somewhere else in the room now. She didn’t know where.
“Say what you did.”
“OK—” she began.
“Say it!” Sayitsayitsayit.
“I did. I’ll say it. I did it with him, Nick.”
He groaned, wherever he was, as if it hurt to hear it though he already knew, had known as soon as it happened, had maybe always known she wasn’t good enough for him, not moral or mature enough.
“Go ahead. Get mad.”
Make it stop.
“Do it, for once. Get mad. I want that,” she wailed. “I want you to, Nick — you’ve earned it — but you might want to do it later, because there’s someone out there.” Did she care? Could it matter now? “There’s someone out there,” Meg repeated, in a small, pathetic voice.
She felt him lunge, and she sprang out of the way, scrabbling for the candle, which was still and miraculously burning down low by the wall, but so were the curtains. She yanked one half of them down and tried to wave the fire out; she waved to keep it between them, too, as if there weren’t enough between them already.
He stood up, and the knees of his khaki pants were black with something, stained. He lunged again, and in her panic she dropped the burning fabric, slipping in the same something — or was he pulling her down — slipping and scrabbling on a floor slick with blood, or another substance that smelled of salt and metal. Blood on his knees and palms, and they struggled, coughing, through the smoke toward the door, not together exactly but at once, and her own voice sounded wild as a bear. By the stairs Nick slipped again, and fell, thudding down in the dark.
She heard this, and then silence, and her fists clenched, and there were sirens. There was smoke.
Meg woke in a hospital. When her eyes opened, there was Nick, sitting in a chair beside her bed. No, not Nick.
While the two of them were still unconscious, one of the nurses had dialed the phone number scribbled on a train stub in Nick’s wallet — Ethan’s friend’s apartment in Barcelona — the only contact info she could find on either of them.
“He’s over there,” Ethan assured her, hooking his thumb. “Boy genius is awake behind the curtain. But he’s not speaking to me. He keeps rolling away like he has a stomachache. Might still be in pain, but Doc says he’ll be fine. It’s just a concussion and some bruises. The shoulder’s all popped in.” Ethan gave hers a little knuckle-punch. “You guys are in some deep shit with the law. Who knew he had it in him? But he’s fine.”
Neatly folded on a plastic chair beyond his curtained bed was Nick’s Oxford button-down, as crisp and clean as ever, apart from garish stripes of dirt from his fall down the staircase, like sk
id marks on a road. Bloodless.
“Right. Sorry to interrupt your holiday, big guy.”
He laughed, licking his lips, and it wasn’t a laugh she loved. It wasn’t Nick’s laugh, identical though they might seem. Identical in almost every way. “You oughta be sorry, kid. But as I say, he’ll be fine.”
Kid.
Was that what she was?
Ethan pulled a plastic baggie from the pocket of his denim jacket and started rolling a cigarette on the chair arm. Meg rolled away and off the pillow in disgust. She pressed her hot cheek against the lime-green hospital wall, and it felt cool and blank, like a blessing. She knew Nick would recover but that she would never see him again, that his brother would be forgiven, but she would not be. “Yes,” she agreed, writing Nick’s name, her best friend’s name, on the wall with a bruised finger. “He’ll be fine.”
DA CAN RANT ALL HE WANTS —“Gavin, this,” and “Gavin, that”— when he’s pissed, but he backs off when I fix him with a look. My Old Testament stare, he calls it, as in I Will Smite Thee, and let’s hope it works on roofers.
I fired them today, his cronies, because Da’s not here and I am.
Erik and Denez had just finished the burnt-out section of the west wing. Rebuilt and retiled the roof completely. Fine job, too, and Da thought to keep them on some, give them heavy lifting, stonework, what have you. But with him down for the count, I can’t see spending another week on-site with these guys, much less the month or more the job will take. They’re good with a hammer — and loyal to my da — but better at stuffing their mugs with their wives’ lunches and trolling for porn on Erik’s laptop. After a bit of that, they sit around smoking with Brie on their teeth and flicking their butts all over the new lawn I’m laying from seed. They’ve no use for a deaf seventeen-year-old boss. And I’ve no use, anymore, for them.
All the while I’m fighting to look them in the eye while I fire them, Clio’s sprawled at my feet panting like the sweet, dumb mutt she is — her tongue a flapping flag of surrender.
“You’re sure about that, Gavin?” Den can sign and knows it’s easier for me. Almost all Da’s friends can sign some — because he says so. But I also read lips, thanks to Mum, who thought I’d do better in the bigger world that way. “Bagad won’t like it,” Den adds regretfully.
“Yeah,” Erik puts in. “Your father won’t like it.”
I breathe in, storing up for the garbled adventure that is speech, since Erik’s not one of Da’s that learned to sign. “He’ll see my side.” They don’t wince, but you can see it in someone’s face when you have to modulate, so I lower my voice. “I don’t need you now. Too many cooks in the kitchen.”
Den holds out his cell, but I pat my pocket. “It’s all set,” I lie. “He’ll be in touch about the place in Normandy.” I fish in the back pocket of my jeans for the postdated checks Da wrote. At breakfast, I penned in today’s date and forged Da’s initials. “Here.”
They just stare at me, and I stare back.
I’m not brave, but I’ve never been especially afraid, either. I saw no use in fear once Mum died. The worst had happened. I don’t have nightmares like my sister, Sondra, does still, flailing and fussing about the dark. My mind’s like still water, and most of the people in my life know not to cast stones into it.
“He’s a mad little dog,” Uncle Sean once spat, when I was eleven and nearly brained him with a shovel while we were digging Sondra’s cat’s grave and he unwittingly made her cry. “It’s the runt quiet ones, not the big barkers, you have to worry about.” He’d ducked just in time, and my uncle looked shaken, but he forgave me at once. I could see that. “They pounce, those quiet ones, and won’t let go.”
Finally Erik takes the check, his hand striking like a snake. Beady eyes search out the amount, and when he finds it, he sucks his teeth and shrugs. “So.”
Den doesn’t give in as easily, but in another minute Erik grabs the other check, too, spits on the ground, and nudges Den off toward the shuttered stables, where our trucks are parked.
I don’t notice them drive away, but when Clio leaps up to chase them down the gravel and out through the gates onto the main avenue, I relax.
I don’t wait for her to come back. She always does, good old girl, always comes when I whistle. We understand each other, and I’ll never punish Clio with a leash unless she crosses me. I yawn and think about taking a nap. After a lot of cajoling from Da, the historical society agreed to let me board for the duration in the abandoned cottage at the far edge of the property, beyond the chapel, stables, dovecote, and the near-ruined orchard. The orchard is next on my list. There’s no task I know more satisfying than pruning.
But before I can relax into that or anything else, I should text Da and fess up. He won’t be pleased, especially that I advanced their full month’s wages, but I’ve worked hard to prove that I’m capable of making this kind of decision.
There’s no telling if he’ll look at his text messages anytime soon. He isn’t expecting to hear from me until the weekend. The insurance has been giving him hell on account of his back, and though Sondra squawked, we got rid of the landline to save money. The three of us are pretty good about texting.
As it turns out, there’s no cell access anywhere on the grounds. Yesterday I had luck up by the road, but I’m not making that trek right now. I’ll fetch supper later at the cybercafé in town and text from the road or e-mail Da when I get there.
As I say, I’m rarely afraid. Sondra says it’s because I’m too logical, but a couple of weeks before I drove up here in Da’s loaded flatbed from Quimper, I’m in the waiting room at the dentist’s reading an article in a movie magazine. It’s an interview with some Italian director, and he’s going on about soundtracks, how a movie soundtrack can paint the mood for almost any scene. The drums tell the heart to beat. The strings set your nerves on edge. So I form this theory. Maybe I’m not afraid because my world is buffered by silence, sort of unspoiled.
I have no soundtrack, I guess you could say, but I remember music. I’ve only been deaf a few years. What’s more, I come from a musical family. It’s hard to be deaf in a family like ours, though no one, least not my Mum and Da, ever purposely made me feel the loss. But back when Mum was still with us, it shook the floors some nights, made the chair under me shiver. I could stomp along all right, but I’m no Beethoven and will always be off the rhythm, out of key.
But speaking of reception, it’s funny that since I’ve been here, my inner ear, the one that works on memory — not vibration, as for others — has been on a tear. I keep hearing snatches of fiddle. Sean or Da would call it “violin,” nose in the air; all three brothers play, or used to, the old-timey music, stomp-to reels and the sad old ballads, gwerziou and sonniou about drowned lovers and such. They fiddle.
This is a bleak, worked-up tune, gypsy-wild but also refined, repeating over and over, and I’m hearing it — or a memory of it — tuning in and out again all over the grounds, especially near the building.
My mind may be like still water, but sometimes a thing lights on it like a leaf, and there’s this ripple, this storm of rings. That girl I thought I saw this morning behind the chapel, for instance, bending by a tangle of briars. This land is rich and overrun, and locals must find plenty to poach: rabbits, berries, whatever. But this morning’s trespasser seemed mystical, like a deer you meet on a path in the woods when you aren’t hunting, aren’t looking. She wasn’t real, couldn’t be real — she was dressed funny, for one thing, like an old-fashioned maid with pleated, poofy skirts, an apron, a little cap — so maybe I made her up to pass the time. She reminded me of that song Mum liked to sing. “She Moved Through the Fair,” I think it was called. Now there was haunted — whether because Mum’s gone now or just because she had the right voice for those lyrics — and Da accompanied so solemnly, sweetly, on his fiddle, as if to urge her gently toward the place where the song led. As if he saw the future.
Da more or less gave up his fiddle after Mum passed. �
�It’s God’s gift to you, man,” my uncle Sean grumped. “You have to use it.”
“You mean the same God that took my wife?” Da challenged. “And my son’s hearing?” Sometimes even now he forgets I read lips. Or maybe Da wanted me to get that, wanted me to know what I’d cost him, what Mum had cost him, though he’s never been spiteful that way.
“What song and why — if not for them?”
Sean winced and shook his head, pouring another cup of coffee for them both.
The not speaking seemed to physically weigh on them until Da said, “There, now. Shaddup, Sean,” meaning go on and talk about football or some shop-woman’s fabled backside, and my uncle obliged.
So this music, it fades in and out, like cell-phone reception. The signal comes and goes depending where I stand. Do I remember this tune? Wouldn’t I remember this tune? I have a little mental card catalog of stored music, a treasury I draw from without warning. I can rarely call something up when I need it, but tunes come unannounced and knock me flat. Maybe this music is something I’ve heard, one of Mum’s CDs — she wasn’t hardened against “the violin” like Da and sometimes listened to old-guy composers with names like Ciconia or Corelli or What-Helly.
I’m worrying about Clio now and start whistling for her. What if she galloped into the road and under the wheels of a car? What if Den and Erik dognapped her for spite? She always comes when I call. Always.
I wait an agonizing while and then whistle again, loud, though of course I can’t hear a thing; I just feel it, a wind in my ears, a storm in my head, and a few minutes later she blows past my legs at a canter, gleefully twisting in play. It’s what she does when I walk her in the park and there are dogs there, when they run circles round each other, snapping and sniffing each other’s rear ends. Only here there are no other dogs. It’s sort of eerie and fascinating, something I’ve never seen her do before.
The Ghosts of Kerfol Page 10
