Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  “It’s Jess,” she said in a muffled voice. “Call me.” She flipped the phone shut then picked up a magazine. “Think fast!” she said and threw it right at Henry’s face.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked, rubbing his cheekbone as he tried not to cry.

  “You.”

  “Then leave,” Nellie said.

  “I can’t. Nobody’s home and Patrice is at the movies,” she sighed.

  “My father’ll drive you. I’ll go get him.” Nellie jumped up to push back the plywood cover.

  “No! I was just kidding. Jeez.” She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s not kidding. That’s insulting. I mean, this is Henry’s first night in his tree house and he lets you be here, and you’re throwing stuff at him?”

  “I’m sorry! All right?” She ripped the paper off her fifth Snickers bar and tossed it out the window opening.

  Nellie and Henry looked at each other.

  Her phone rang. “Yeah,” she answered. “Yeah, we are … I don’t care … Okay … Sure, if you want …”

  “Who was that?” Nellie asked when she hung up.

  “Nobody.”

  Jessica refused to tell her, and besides, it wasn’t any of Nellie’s business.

  “It’s my business when you’re on my property,” Nellie said.

  “It’s not your property.”

  “Well, whose is it then?” Nellie asked uneasily. Jessica just might know more than she did.

  “Your parents, of course,” she crowed.

  “Same thing,” Nellie said, relieved.

  Henry had retreated into his sleeping bag. He lay with his back to them, headlamp on, still reading. Nellie was unrolling her sleeping bag, straightening it, getting the zippers to work smoothly.

  “Jesus!” Jessica said from the window opening where she knelt. “Your friggin’ house has bats. They keep coming in and out of the chimney.”

  Nellie crawled over next to her. Things were swooping down into the chimney, then darting out again. Quick black things. Lots of things. “Those’re just chimney swifts. Every house has them.” Grateful Henry didn’t contradict her, she returned to her sleeping bag.

  “Mine doesn’t,” she said, still watching. “Jesus, what do you live in, some kinda haunted house?”

  “Shut up! Just shut up, Jessica!” Nellie was sick of it. Sick of her.

  Jessica turned back, grinning. Nothing pleased her more than pushing people to the edge—especially Nellie. She used to think it was the only real happiness Jessica could feel. But now Nellie wondered if it was the only feeling she could understand—someone else’s pain. Because she had so much of her own, being so negative, mean, unhappy, disturbed, Nellie didn’t know which, and right then, didn’t care. “Least my house doesn’t have bats,” Jessica said, leaning out the window opening. “Hey!” she called down in a whisper.

  “Hey!” a voice answered, and before Nellie could stop her, she had pushed back the plywood cover and dropped the ladder down.

  Bucky Saltonstall’s head popped through the opening. “Hey!” he laughed.

  “You can’t come up here!” Nellie couldn’t believe his nerve. And Jessica’s.

  “I’m already up.”

  “No! My parents don’t want anyone in here. Just us,” Nellie said.

  “Then, shh!” Squatting on his heels, he gestured them closer. Somebody was chasing him, he whispered, this weird guy named Gussie who thought he owed him some money. For what? Jessica asked, grinning with excitement. Bucky looked around as if he’d heard a sound. A bike, he whispered. Right after the guy bought it from him, someone stole it from his garage.

  That was his problem, Nellie said. Not theirs, and if he didn’t leave, then she was going to go get her father. Henry’s headlamp faded. Nellie knew he was holding his breath, wanting to disappear into the green-tinted shadows. With this bad mix of people there was bound to be trouble. And they couldn’t risk their parents or, God forbid, Jessica with her big mouth, finding out about their own dark foray into stolen bikes. She could threaten to tell the disgusting thing Bucky had done to her brother, but that would be too humiliating for Henry, especially in front of Jessica.

  “Shh!” Jessica whispered, ducking low. “What’s that?”

  “Wind chimes,” Nellie said quietly, immediately regretting it. Scared enough, she might leave and take Bucky with her.

  “No, listen!” she whispered.

  “Bats?” Nellie whispered. “In the tree it sounds like.”

  “Somebody’s out there,” Bucky said. He crawled to the opening that overlooked her house. Nellie couldn’t see anyone either, but the sound was more than wind chimes. Bucky moved to the opposite opening and peered out. With a sudden rustle through the leaves, he ducked back.

  “Definitely bats,” Nellie hissed, enjoying his cowering. In the corner, Jessica huddled, knees to her chin. Henry hadn’t moved.

  “Down there,” Bucky whispered, pointing to the floor.

  Maybe the weird guy named Gussie was right under them, waiting to make his move. Waiting to strike. Nellie scrambled onto the plywood cover, with herself as ballast. Henry gave an approving nod. Just then, a strange, muted gasp pierced the leafy darkness, and a bright light flared in Jessica’s hand, her cell phone. She was calling 911, she whispered.

  “No!” Bucky snatched her phone.

  Below them a strange woman had appeared on the Humboldt’s brick path. Her blond hair streamed down her back. Tall and very thin, she wore spike heels, an ankle-length dress with a high ruffled collar, and a satiny billowing cape that glowed in the lamplight. At the edge of the patio, she wobbled, then steadied herself. Just then, the back door of the house opened and out lumbered Louisa Humboldt. Arms outstretched, her nightgown moved over the path like a great floating tent.

  “Tenley!” she hissed, and he stepped back. “Come inside, please. Please, Tenley, before someone comes out. Please, you don’t want that, now do you?”

  “I don’t care!” he gasped. “I don’t! I really, really don’t!”

  “You don’t mean that, dear. You know you don’t.”

  “Stop telling me what I mean or what I know or what I think!”

  “I’m not. Of course I’m not,” she said, slipping an arm through his.

  “Then leave me alone. Please!” And pulling free, he flung himself down into a chaise longue. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and ankles crossed. His sister leaned close, still entreating him to come inside, but he would have no part of it.

  They were all at the window opening. Nellie didn’t say anything. Mostly because she didn’t know what to say. She’d heard of such things, but this was right next door.

  “What’s going on?” Bucky asked, watching Louisa Humboldt lower herself down onto the sagging chaise longue next to her brother’s. She sat facing him. Head turned, he twirled his necklace impatiently as she spoke. It was the same one Miss Humboldt had bought at the jewelry party.

  “No!” he erupted, swinging his feet over the side. “Because I don’t! I just don’t care anymore!”

  “Who the hell’re they?” Bucky whispered, shoulder pressing against Nellie’s.

  “Miss Humboldt and her brother,” she whispered, and in his quiet nearness, felt a stirring in her heart. So many troubled people. Like Bucky. Poor Bucky, such a tough life, no wonder he was so messed up. All he needed was a friend, someone to be kind to him, someone to help him stay out of trouble.

  “Cool,” he said, and she liked him even more.

  “My father says they’re, like, really strange,” Jessica said, wide-eyed.

  “He doesn’t even know them,” Nellie shot back.

  “Are you kidding, he knows everything about everybody,” she said. “Like how much money they have, and their houses, all that stuff.”

  “So he must know about Mr. Humboldt being in plays then. He’s, like, some kind of actor. Like in Japan, how they look like ladies, but they’re really men,” Nellie lied to keep Jessica from tellin
g how little money her family had and how desperate they were for her father’s help. “And that’s his costume. Probably going over his lines. He does that sometimes.” Fueling her bluff was her sudden loyalty to the Humboldts. As her life-long neighbors they were hers, no matter how strange, and she would not have them scorned.

  “Hey, freak!” Bucky suddenly cried. He threw a Snickers bar through the opening. Mr. Humboldt ducked as it whizzed by his long moonlit hair. “Here, fag, suck on this!” Bucky shouted, firing off another candy bar, then another. Mr. Humboldt’s hands flew to his face. Miss Humboldt peered up at the tree. “Stop that! You just stop that right now!” she screeched, flinching as the next one hit her arm.

  “That’s my candy, asshole!” Jessica was trying to wrestle the bag from Bucky, but he kept firing candy bars. Mr. Humboldt was a sorry sight struggling to get up in his long, tapered skirt. His ankle must have turned because he sank down on one knee. Nellie had to stop Bucky. The Sentry Hold! She and Henry had practiced it before, though never on a kneeling opponent. From behind, she locked her left forearm against Bucky’s throat and delivered a sharp jab in the small of his back, hard as she could. He fell against the boards, gagging. For an awful moment she thought she’d really hurt him.

  “Very likely the blows on his throat and in the small of his back will cause him to drop his rifle or will knock his helmet off his head. Retaining your hold around his neck with your left arm, drag him away backwards,” the major wrote.

  There would be no dragging Bucky away. “Bitch!” he cried, turning on her with fists raised. “I’m gonna smash your fucking ugly face in.”

  “Try it,” she growled, instantly realizing just how confining an arena was their little house in the night sky. “Go ahead, just try it!” she warned, mind racing through fragile pages to The Bent-Arm Hold.

  “Your opponent has taken up a boxing stance.… Seize his right wrist with your left hand, bending his arm at the elbow, towards him. Continue the pressure on his wrist.… Immediately step in with your right foot, placing your right leg and hip close in to your opponent’s thigh.…”

  She was readying her left hand when Bucky lunged across the creaky floor, knocking her into the rough wall. A long board popped out and the whole tree house shook, propelling Henry into the action. On her knees, she groped along the floor for her glasses.

  “Let her go!” Henry shouted, lashing Bucky’s back with his headlamp.

  “Stop it!” Jessica screeched, trying to scoop up the spilled candy. “Jesus! Stop it, will you stop it!”

  “What in God’s name is going on out here?” her mother shouted from below.

  “Nellie!” her father’s voice boomed. “You and Henry, get down here! Right now! And you, too, Jessica,” he demanded a little more kindly as she peered out at him.

  Last one down the ladder was Bucky. No one spoke as he ran from the yard.

  THE NEXT DAY they were sitting with their father in the Humboldt’s brilliant living room, heads hung both from shame and the glare as they waited for Tenley Humboldt. Sunlight poured through the picture window sheers onto the gilt-streaked mirrored squares covering the walls. The tables were glass topped and all the furniture was white, even the carpeting, while everything else was golden: lamps, vases, picture frames, and an assortment of birdcages in which lifelike yellow canaries stared out vacantly from lacquered perches.

  Their parents had explained that Tenley Humboldt was a very nice man who in the privacy of his home dressed in women’s clothes.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” her father had said, her mother nodding as Nellie and Henry dared not make eye contact.

  Last night, as Miss Humboldt had earlier told them, she and her brother had disagreed once again about selling the house. The big old place was just too much work for her. She wanted something smaller, preferably one of the new town houses being built out on Riley Road. She blamed herself, she said, for not easing into things the way she’d always done with Tenley. Instead, she’d just told him flat out that a real estate agent was coming in the morning to give them an appraisal, which just pushed poor Tenley over the edge. And then, to be taunted and pelted with missiles (MISS-eyels, she pronounced it), well, that had been devastating.

  “I don’t know—I don’t think he’s coming down,” she sighed, looking toward the wide staircase. “I told him he didn’t have to, but …” Her voice trailed off.

  “If he doesn’t, that’s fine,” Nellie’s father said. “Don’t worry about it, Louisa.”

  “Well, I do, Ben, I do. You have no idea how much I do.”

  “We can always come back.”

  “It’s …” Her hand flew to her quivering mouth.

  “Same as a thank-you—it’s never too late for an apology.”

  “It’s all just such a shame.” She struggled to contain her tears.

  “I know. Their friend …” Her father cleared his throat. His embarrassment was painful to see. And now on top of it, he and her mother were barely speaking. She thought he’d been too hard on Jessica Cooper, who’d gone home last night, sobbing. Actually, he’d barely said a word to Jessica, but that was her way, having such a meltdown that no one would dare reprimand her. “But still,” he continued, “they were the ones in charge. Their responsibility—”

  “I mean, the whole thing, and now …” She gestured at them. “… this,” she said weakly. “They’re just children. They shouldn’t have to—” She wiped her puffy red eyes.

  “Oh yes, they should, Louisa,” he said sternly. “They have to. Better learn now, than go around thinking anyone different from them’s not quite right. We’re all odd ducks, every single one of us, and they know that. Right?” He peered down at his children.

  “Yes, sir,” Nellie and Henry answered softly, in guilt and giddiness, afraid to look at each other. Their father saying they were all odd ducks had always been their signal to quack.

  A door squealed open above them. Tenley Humboldt stood at the top of the stairs for what seemed the longest time, wearing men’s clothing, Nellie was relieved to see. He descended each step slowly, head trembling slightly as he tried to look their way but couldn’t. Her father nodded and they jumped up.

  “Hello, Ben,” he said. His small, raspy voice reminded Nellie of something fragile—wings, she realized, the brush of moth wings close to the ear. Even his handshake seemed more flutter than grasp. Never having been this close, now she was alert to every detail. The man looked faded, his skin the same drabness as his shirt and pants that hung on his skinny frame in folds, his fine hair pulled tightly back in a thin ponytail. He was wearing a narrow turquoise bracelet, but no necklace. They’d come to apologize, her father said, patting her arm, and so she began. Mr. Humboldt couldn’t make eye contact, which only prolonged Nellie’s stammered apology. He seemed so delicate, in such distress that she was desperate for him to know that they hadn’t thrown the candy bars at him, they’d never do something like that, and that the person who had wasn’t even supposed to be up there with them and never would be again, he could be sure of that. He and Miss Humboldt both.

  “And as far as I’m concerned, people should do exactly as they please. Which means wearing what they want to wear, and … and … doing what they want, because we’re all the same underneath … the clothes we have on, whichever ones they are, I mean.” She looked around wide eyed, relieved to see everyone staring down at the floor.

  “Henry,” her father said softly.

  “And I’m sorry, too.” Henry’s voice was so shaky she was afraid he might cry. “Sometimes I get picked on and I don’t know why.” He swallowed hard. “It always makes me feel bad. But then … then, I think, well, maybe it’s them. Maybe they don’t have a nice life or something. I don’t know.” With his timid shrug, her father rubbed Henry’s head, and she knew that never again would she tolerate unkindness or injustice, especially to someone as good as her brother.

  “That was very nice,” Miss Humboldt said, touching her cheek.

&nbs
p; “Some things just need saying from time to time,” their father said. Nellie knew he was feeling the same about Henry that she was.

  “They certainly do,” Miss Humboldt agreed.

  A moment of uneasy silence followed as they each fixed on a place to look, anywhere but at poor Mr. Humboldt’s misery. Head trembling, he reached into his pants pocket, twice. “Here.” He held out two handfuls of Snickers bars. When no one took them right away, he dropped them onto the glass coffee table then slipped into the next room and closed the door.

  “He’s afraid of animals eating them. Chocolate’s not good for them. In fact,” Miss Humboldt added, trying for a perkier tone, “some even die from it.”

  “Dogs.” Henry nodded.

  “Yeah, but that’s if they eat a lot,” Nellie said, grateful to be making their way back from such dense, prickly woods into a conversational clearing.

  “Probably depends on the size dog,” her father said.

  “Yes,” Miss Humboldt said absently. She was looking toward the door. And Nellie felt her yearning—Tenley, her brother, in there needing her to keep him safe, and for as long as she could, she would.

  DAYS LATER, IN the early morning, Nellie opened her window and saw something on the lawn. She ran outside and picked it up, a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of pink carnations wet from the dewy grass. Never too late for an apology, her father had said. Bucky, she thought, dropping it into the wastebasket, his cowardly way of telling her he was sorry. When her mother came down for breakfast and found the flowers in the trash, she took them out and arranged them in a vase of water.

  “I just found them,” Nellie answered honestly when her mother asked who’d brought them.

  For a week their fragrance filled the kitchen, sometimes making her smile for no reason at all.

  Chapter 11

  SO THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED, THE WAY SHE REMEMBERS IT, ANYWAY. Funny how some details seem so compressed. Like the letter, for instance. Maybe it did come a while before, but once she started keeping secrets and trying to make strangeness seem perfectly normal, then pretty soon, events started running together, exactly what was said and by whom, and the reason for this or that, eventually all twining together like a house built of twigs, fragile and unsecured, because each enfeebled fact depended on another, and that one on the one before, until in the end nothing seemed true anymore.