Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  Besides, she needed food, and a place to sleep, and this beat wandering around in the cold and using up her cash. The wad of bills had seemed like a lot when she got it out of the bank, but the motel on the first night had cost more than she’d expected, and she didn’t know how many nights she’d need a place to stay.

  She hurried down the street after the woman.

  At first glance, the house looked as if it had been built of bones. Dry white stretches, long walls, sharp angles, stark light shining from jagged windows.

  “It’s completely earth-friendly,” the woman said.

  It might have been earth-friendly, but it didn’t look people-friendly. The ride had been long, the driveway endless. As Blue stepped out of the car, she could see trees and stars emerging overhead. She could hear the sounds of distant roads. No other house lights shining through the woods. Just like a horror movie: no one around to hear her scream. She drew a quick breath as the hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  The woman had introduced herself as Amy just before letting herself into the car. Blue had gotten as far as B in writing her own name before remembering the girl in the basement with the sparking wire. Bess Andrews, she’d written.

  “Bess? That’s very retro, isn’t it? My mother had a friend named Bess, I think, or Betsy . . . maybe Betsy. You would never believe what she was like—” And Amy launched into another long string of words that didn’t end until they stepped out onto the gravel drive in front of the unfriendly house.

  “We thought about going a bit bigger,” Amy said, switching tracks. “But we decided we could make do. Every little bit for the environment, right?”

  From what Blue could see through the windows, Lynne’s trailer would have fit inside, along with a host of others. Teena’s family had a big house, but Teena’s family had five kids, plus two uncles and one set of grandparents living in the additions tacked on later in bits and pieces.

  Not this house. The entry led into an open empty space. A fan slowly rotated beneath the high ceiling, its long cord twirling slightly with the motion. The chrome-and-white furniture had been arranged to face a glass wall. The kitchen, tucked in one corner, was occupied by stainless-steel appliances. Nothing hung on the refrigerator door except a single white square with a quote centered on it about the beauty of each and every soul. It looked like the kind of place where you might find petri dishes and microscopes, not a family.

  “My husband, Todd, won’t be home until late. He’s with clients. My younger son, Yoshi, is at a friend’s house for the night. It’s just us girls and Marcos.”

  Marcos? She’d tuned out during the ride, focused on her feet and her empty stomach. The names Yoshi and Marcos didn’t fit with the smiling white woman in front of her.

  “Marcos,” Amy trilled. No response. She walked to the staircase at the far side of the room, the wide open steps leading to an equally open landing. “Come down, Marcos.”

  The sound of a door opening somewhere far away. Footsteps followed, a teenage boy appearing on the landing. He was tall, thin, the kind of boy that black trench coats were designed for, and cigarettes, and late-night coffees at diners. His dark hair shot in all directions, as if he’d come straight from bed.

  “What?”

  He even sounded the way Blue expected: a bit bored, a bit tired, a lot irritated.

  “This is Betsy Andrews. She’s traveling, and I found her on a street corner looking for help. Of course I told her to stay with us tonight.”

  If Blue had a voice of her own, she would have sounded just as irritated as Marcos looked. Not that the name “Betsy” really made a difference. One fake name was the same as another; but she still pulled out her notebook and underlined “Bess.”

  “Bess. That’s what I said, sweetheart. You just didn’t hear me right.” Amy gave her a thin-lipped smile. “Bess can’t speak. Can you imagine how lucky she is to have run into me tonight?”

  The boy slunk down the stairs. He sized her up just as she had him, practiced and quick. “Bess, huh?” he said, with a touch of a smirk. Smarter than she’d thought, then.

  “Marcos, did Paulina leave food? Paulina cooks for us,” Amy added. “She’s lovely, thoughtful, so willing to try things differently from what she’s used to. We used to use a chef some friends recommended, but he, well, we prefer to help people, you know. Paulina needed the work more than he did. Things have been hard for her.”

  The boy gave a quick twitch of his head, rubbed his fingers together. Money. Paulina cost less.

  “It may not be what you’re used to, Betsy. We follow the Dalapur diet, and we only use fresh local ingredients. It’s made such a difference for us. We’re so much healthier now. I’m giving a talk on it on Friday in my women’s group.”

  Betsy again. It felt like being poked by a blunt pencil point, over and over. Blue shrugged.

  Amy pursed her lips. “Betsy, I’m putting you up in my home, and feeding you, and treating you like part of my family. The least you can do is show me respect.”

  Marcos smirked. Blue forced her mouth closed, held her notebook against her thigh to write.

  Sorry, it sounds great!

  It didn’t make a difference to Amy. “It was rude of you to just stand there and shrug. Even if you can’t speak, you’re perfectly capable of responding.”

  Blue started to write more, but Amy held up her hand. “No, it’s past. I’m very sensitive. It’s who I am in this life—very sensitive so that I can feel the world’s pain and teach others about it. I . . . I just need to go and sit and find my center. You two can wait for dinner.” She left, exiting through a hallway beneath the stairs.

  Blue gritted her teeth. At least back in the city she’d had the chance of finding food, even if it cost her money. Here . . .

  She wrote quickly—Food?—and flashed the page at Marcos.

  “She’s being a bitch. It’s not like she cooks, anyway. That takes too much time away from her full-time job of being that.” He gestured in the direction Amy had gone. “Come on, I’ve got food in my room.”

  She followed him up the stairs, guitar in one hand, backpack in the other. Everything shone and smelled empty—not of polish, like Lynne’s house; or of dogs, like Teena’s; or even of people. The air smelled of nothing, just empty space—at least until Marcos opened the door to his room.

  There it smelled of incense and pizza. The room was designed to be as sparse as the rest of the house, with a loft bed, white walls, and a huge bank of windows. The loft had blankets hanging off it, though, and grayish smudges marred the walls here and there. On one wall hung a poster of a burnt tree standing in the midst of a snowy field. An incense burner waited on the desk, dust streaks beneath it. A laptop sat beside it, the screen covered in bouncing polka dots.

  And beside that was an open pizza box. Blue pounced. Cheese, pepperoni, sausage . . . more or less a whole pig on a greasy crust. At home, she would have picked the meat off. Here, she wolfed down two pieces while Marcos watched.

  “Hungry much?” He sat in his desk chair swiveling back and forth. He had an odd energy, one she recognized reluctantly. Teena’s cousin Rob had had the same as he clock-watched his way through a class. She’d seen it in other people, too, during the Dry Gully days—that glitter in the eyes, that restlessness, things she hadn’t had the words for at four, six, eight.

  She wasn’t a little girl anymore. There was a word, and it was junkie.

  “You play that thing?” He touched the guitar case with his toe.

  She wiped her hands on her pants. The pizza settled into a heavy lump inside her.

  Yeah, I play.

  How was she supposed to answer? She’d watched real musicians all through her childhood. Their playing seemed effortless, as if the guitar strings had dreamed their fingers into being. She felt like a poseur by comparison.

  If she was honest, though, she played better than almost everyone else she knew since moving to Eliotville. It was just . . . She wasn’t sure what it was. She wasn�
�t the one who stood up in front of people and played. She was the one who watched.

  She picked one of Dry Gully’s songs for Marcos, her inattentive audience of one. More than playing, she wanted to sing, even if she wasn’t the best. When Mama sang, the words were rich as chocolate. Cass sang sultry, older than she was, like an invitation to a private party. Blue didn’t sound like either of them. She had funny pauses and breathless bits.

  She still loved it. It was something like flying—like birds, not planes, a sensation of soaring around the notes of the guitar. It was escape, reaching a place where what mattered was the song, nothing more.

  “Nice,” Marcos said when she finished, though she wasn’t sure he meant it. His attention drifted—the clock, the drawer, the door.

  Marcos? + Yoshi?

  She held her notebook up.

  “It’s part of this ‘we’re one big happy world’ shit. At least Marcos sounds cool. I’m luckier than Yosh.”

  Don’t you like your mom?

  He pulled at the drawer. Half inch open, then back to closed. “Would you? I mean, she has her moments, but . . . moments, you know? She doesn’t get it.”

  Get what?

  “Anything. That she’s a fake. That people can’t stand her. That my dad can’t even stand her. That . . .” He tugged the drawer open far enough that she could see a plastic bag peeking out, then closed it partway.

  He didn’t want her there. Or maybe he did; maybe he was convincing himself he didn’t need what was in the bag. It wouldn’t work, though. It never had, not with Rob, who’d chosen the contents of the bag over school, home, everything.

  “They get hooked,” Mama’d said once on the phone, to someone else, not knowing Blue was there. “Then there’s nothing you can do to pull them back. It’s up to them to choose to do the work. All you can do is leave a bread-crumb trail of love and keep on with your life.”

  Bathroom?

  He pointed her down the hall. She paused on the threshold. Would it make a difference if she stayed? Didn’t matter. She was just passing through.

  Blue took her time, washing her hands and face and neck. She’d ask to take a shower before she left in the morning. Sleep in a bed for free, get cleaned up, and leave. They wouldn’t even be in danger, since she hadn’t given them her real name.

  Wouldn’t be in danger from her, at least. Marcos’s problems belonged to him. Parents were stupid. Teena’s aunt and uncle had been clueless about Rob, right up until they couldn’t be any longer. They only loved the perfect, imaginary him, leaving the real him invisible.

  Back in Marcos’s room, the incense was lit, heady smoke spinning threads as the air moved with the closing of the door. His face was on his desk, and a strand of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  She shook him gently. He moved his head, too lazy even to smile. He was alive. He was okay. Now she could be irritated.

  She’d go back downstairs and wait for Amy to come out of her sulk and tell her where to sleep. She grabbed her guitar, then her backpack. She noticed that the front pocket had come open. If she wasn’t more careful about that, she’d lose her wallet on the street. She zipped it up.

  The door swung open. Amy stood there, and for an instant Blue believed everything would be fine. Amy would see what Marcos had been doing and take care of him. That’s what mothers did.

  Or not. She glanced around the room, at Blue holding her things, at Marcos slumped at the desk, at the candle and the bag of powder. Anger spilled from her mouth like blood from an artery.

  “I invite you into my home, I put all my goodness and trust in your hands, and you do this . . . to me. How could you? You prey on goodness, come here, and give my son poison.” Flecks of spit flew from her mouth. Marcos shifted slightly, looked up at her, said something that was buried beneath her fury.

  “You destroy everything, you and people like you. I know, I know all about your ugliness.”

  Blue crouched, frozen. Let Amy shout. Words couldn’t destroy her. That was something Tish had taught her, not long before she’d vanished.

  “Some people need someone to blame.” Tish had paused, taken a swig from the beer she was holding. One of many, if the bottles on the counter told the truth. “It’s the only way for them to make sense out of things. Doesn’t matter who you are; if you fit what they need for a villain, you’re it. It’s all about them, not you.”

  The screaming wasn’t about taking care of Marcos. It wasn’t Amy being a mom. It was about who Amy saw in the mirror, about what she wanted others to see when they looked at her house. Outsides, not insides. She wanted someone to blame for Marcos. Someone who couldn’t argue back.

  Blue grabbed her bag and her guitar. The toxic flood of words continued as Blue pushed past her, hurried down the stairs, her socks slipping on the buffed floor.

  “Get out, get out, get out!” Now Blue ran, Amy’s voice growing louder and closer behind her. Her boots . . . They were back in Marcos’s room; but she was already at the door, then out, running across the wooden deck in her wool socks.

  The door slammed behind her. Complete quiet. She glanced back. The wall of windows made the downstairs a terrarium at night, a spotless sealed world. Amy paced within, her mouth moving constantly, never once looking out, trapped in her inhospitable home.

  The night air wrapped around Blue, crisp, the stars sharp, the woods silent but for the rustle of dead leaves as the breeze moved through them. She would have traded her soul again for the chance to swear. Something long and satisfying, something that would have made even Teena whistle in appreciation. Writing it out wasn’t the same.

  Her boots were on the other side of the door Amy had slammed behind her. Without the boots, she’d lose her bet. Shivering in the cold, she wondered what exactly it meant to give up your soul.

  That was stupid. She wouldn’t lose. In the morning they’d leave. She’d stop Marcos, ask him for them. He’d help. He owed her that much. Thanks to her, his mom could go on pretending he was perfect. He wasn’t the problem; Blue was.

  In the meantime, she needed to stay warm. She padded back across the deck, down the stairs and underneath. The ground there was damp and cold, so she pulled a pile of leaves together. Tucked inside, leaning against one of the deck beams, she wrapped her arms around her knees and settled in.

  Blue woke with a start at some sound she couldn’t classify. The leaves scraped against her neck as she rubbed her eyes. It was still night, the sliver of moon lowering itself behind the trees. What had she heard? An animal? A car?

  She wiggled her fingers and toes, trying to work the chill out of them. Now that she was awake, she wouldn’t find sleep again. She carried her bag and guitar up onto the deck.

  Inside, the lights were still on, but no one was visible. The clock in the kitchen read 2:00. She held her ear to the glass. Nothing.

  She tried the doorknob. It turned. Quietly, slowly, she crept across the floor to the stairs. Still no sound beyond the ticking of the clock. This would be easier than she thought. If anyone woke, she’d just run—first for her boots, then out of the house. If Amy hadn’t called the cops before, she wasn’t going to do it now.

  She continued up the stairs, thankful that the stairs didn’t creak. Marcos’s light was still on. He’d moved onto his bed, one arm dangling off the side.

  Blue grabbed her boots and scurried back down the stairs. At the bottom she paused. Something held her there, something she couldn’t quite label. A noise just out of range, reminding her of the crunch of gristle between teeth. A hint in the air of something hot, bitter.

  She padded down the hall beneath the stairs, the way Amy had gone earlier that night. The same sound again, so soft she thought it might be a mistake, some trick of her ears or the night. Deep down, she knew she should stop. Whatever was going on in that house had nothing to do with her.

  Curiosity wouldn’t let her leave without knowing. Down the dark hall she went, stopping by a door left ajar. The smell flowed out of the room.
She tensed herself to run and peeked around the corner.

  It was an office. A computer sat on top of a desk, its lit screen displaying an account whose numbers were all red. Beside it waited stacks of unopened mail, a utility bill on top.

  Amy was seated at the desk, one hand on the mail. Her other hand traced aimless circles in the air. Beside her stood a man. Dark brown hair, blue cotton dress shirt. He leaned over her, one hand on the back of the chair. The sound came from him. He was chewing, his teeth making slight clicking sounds as his jaw moved.

  Blue shifted to see what he was chewing. Something pale, gossamer strands that stretched from his chin to Amy’s head like fairy chewing gum. Stretched farther as he straightened up, turned his head toward Blue. Amy’s head turned, too, her mouth slack. Startled, Blue watched the motion of Amy’s hand, identical to the scrabbling of a dying barn cat after Gus Thompson’s pit bull had caught it by the neck and shaken it like a toy. Not aimless—futile. Little more than synaptic desperation, her wide open eyes full of . . . shock.

  Suffering.

  The man grinned, then resumed chewing, the threads stretching farther, thinning, the light fading in them. The sound coming from between his teeth—gristle being ground with pleasure—made Blue’s stomach turn. The man’s grin grew wider as Blue stepped back, her hand on the door. Amy’s mouth moved, too, almost as if mimicking his; a pale bubble swelled between her lips

  The man tugged his head back. With a slippery snap, the threads broke free of Amy’s head. His jaw moved four more times, the final strands disappearing into his mouth. He raised one hand and touched a finger to the bubble between Amy’s lips, watching Blue as if a funny secret rested between them. His finger crooked, the bubble broke, and a wail—pitched so high that Blue felt more than heard it—assailed the room.

  Blue ran. Her boots bounced back and forth against her thigh, and she slid to her knees halfway across the main room. She scrab bled back up, kept going, through the door, across the deck, grabbing her things as she went. She crossed the driveway in a bound and headed into the woods, stumbling over fallen logs as boughs whipped her cheeks.