Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  Blue was walking the driveway when the weather changed. Surely the snow had been used up in the storm that tried to destroy her, she thought, but the wind stung her cheeks raw as the gray spread like oil across the sky. By the time she turned back, the first few flakes had begun to fall.

  Tish had a newspaper laid out on the kitchen table when she came in. “Look here. Seems our human Popsicle had a past.”

  Blue kept her face neutral as she read. The Traveler had a name—Robert Francis Smith—and a sales job with a feed distributor that kept him on the road. A former wife and a child who’d run away when she was fifteen and was never seen again. There was, the state police said, some suggestion that he might have been involved in the disappearance of several prostitutes, to judge by items found in his car, but the nature of the lives of such individuals made it difficult to keep track of their whereabouts.

  Blue curled her fingers inward as she read. By the time she’d finished, she could feel the bite of nails against her palms. Such individuals. Had she read an article like this last year, she would have imagined tough women wearing fake leopard-skin jackets and short leather skirts.

  Whom was she kidding? She wouldn’t have thought of them at all. Calling them prostitutes made it easier, didn’t it? It made it okay that the police hadn’t noticed them go missing, because they’d chosen their lives, hadn’t been driven into them.

  “Ready to talk now?” Tish must have had a guidance system alerting her when to attack, because Blue took out her notebook instead of walking away.

  When she started to write, she was just going to tell about the Traveler. But then she continued with Andrea, and Beyond, and further back to Rat and Steve. And then it seemed silly not to keep going all the way back to Maine, leaving out only the woman in the red dress. She wrote, and Tish waited, and it was only when Blue had finished and handed the notebook over that she realized what she’d done.

  “Jesus, Blue. You’ve been running through all kinds of trouble. Why didn’t you call Lynne for help?”

  I couldn’t.

  And I can’t explain why.

  “‘Couldn’t’ isn’t a good enough answer. What did you do that was so unforgivable that Lynne wouldn’t take you home again? You were searching for Cass.”

  Sometimes the best defense was a good offense. Teena had taught her that.

  Unforgivable? What about my mom? What about never coming to see her, not even coming to her funeral, not even calling us? Explain that.

  The lines went deep in the paper, channels for the ink to run. Tish looked . . . angry? Not really. Sort of angry, sort of sad, sort of defeated.

  “I wasn’t the one who made that call.”

  What do you mean?

  Something sticky and unpleasant opened inside her.

  “I didn’t decide, Blue. That was Clary’s choice.”

  She needed help. We needed help. No way would she send you away.

  Tish stood abruptly and walked to the counter. The glass of water she poured herself trembled a little, enough to make the fluid slosh within.

  “I’m not lying. I may not like everything I’ve done in my life, but I’m grown-up enough to accept responsibility for it. Before she told you about the diagnosis, she told me she wanted me gone.”

  Blue couldn’t even write the word, just mouth it. Why?

  “Oh, Blue, she said a lot of things, and I don’t know what was fear and what was real. She had you and Cass, and she’d raised you traveling with the idea that she’d always be there, and suddenly she wouldn’t. I think she called a retreat. Take you back home, stay with Lynne, be safe.”

  What did she say?

  “She said I wasn’t stable enough. She said a hedonist wasn’t what she needed, and she didn’t trust me to change. She said she couldn’t have her girls depending on someone undependable.” She spoke as if she’d told this story a million times. “I told her that wasn’t fair, but she said life wasn’t fair and I needed to accept it. She told me not to say good-bye, just to leave. She thought it would be harder, more confusing, for you and Cass if I stayed in touch. So I left.”

  No way. Mama would never have done that. She loved Tish.

  “I stayed with some friends. I bummed around for a while, picking up work here and there. I drank. I used people to try to fill that hole you all left. Then my dad had a second heart attack, and I came home. He died. I kept the ranch. I play with Pour Me Another, and I go out with my gal, and I don’t drink anymore. There aren’t many days that I don’t miss your mom, though. What we had, what we were, was special.”

  But maybe she changed her mind. If you’d tried . . .

  Tish gave a gruff laugh. “You think I didn’t try? I mean, no, not at first. I was too angry. But later I started calling Lynne’s and writing letters. Near the end, she let me come and visit.”

  Visit? Blue didn’t remember any visit.

  Again with the mind reading. “She set it up for a school day, and I had to promise to be gone before you were home. I went thinking I could get her to change her mind. Then I got there and realized she was dying. She was so thin, like birch bark and twigs.”

  Then. Near the end, when her mother’s eyes had grown bigger and everything else smaller, when she smelled not of Mama, but of poison and decay.

  “I asked to take you and Cass, the way things were supposed to be. She said no. She said you needed to grow up normal, because she wouldn’t be there to help you figure out the best way to be different.”

  Tish gave her a wry smile. “I told her that I was a pretty good role model for being different, and she said she didn’t want you growing up like me. I can’t pretend that didn’t hurt. A lot.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I couldn’t challenge her. I didn’t have any legal right. I told her that I loved her, but I didn’t think her decision was a good one. It didn’t matter to her.”

  Mama sent Tish away. Tish didn’t run. Mama had taken the one person they’d known, the only other person who felt like home, and sent her away.

  Outside, the sky had turned dark and the window howled, but she no longer cared about the snow.

  I don’t understand. If she wasn’t going to stay with you, why not stay with Cass’s father?

  “Rick? What are you talking about? How do you even know about him?”

  The letters.

  “What letters, Blue?”

  She ran to her room. Into the keepsake bag, out with the letters, and back to the table.

  Here. He was going to help + bring her on tour.

  Tish looked over the pile quickly, then back at her. “She never wanted you to see these.”

  A slow sear rose up Blue’s face.

  I found them in Lynne’s storage.

  Tish shook her head. “These weren’t for either of you to read.”

  How could it hurt? She’d been dead for years.

  The heat continued to spread across her cheeks. She didn’t need Tish to tell her how wrong she had been.

  “Even dead people deserve some privacy. You read those letters—tell me what they mean.”

  Blue hadn’t been totally sure when she read them. That was another part of the reason she’d shown them to Cass.

  We figured he’d offered to take care of Mama and Cass + you’d talked her out of it.

  Tish pinched the bridge of her nose. “And why, exactly, would I do that?”

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Cass said you were selfish. Mama meant more to you than you did to her + you hung on + kept her from going.

  Tish shook her head. “We weren’t even together then, other than the music. Give your mother some credit for making her own decisions. The letters from Rick were because he wanted her to abort. He offered to cover the expenses, and then bring her on tour with him as a backup singer. It was better money than what Dry Gully was making; but in exchange, she’d become one of those nameless women who makes the band sound great and doesn’t get the credit she deserves. She was old enough to know what she wanted
. It wasn’t that. Plus, she was worried her chances at being a mom were vanishing.”

  Tish went to the woodstove, poker in hand. “I didn’t talk her out of anything. I told her that if she wanted a baby, we’d have it together.”

  How do I know you’re not lying?

  The anger slid across Tish’s face and was replaced again by that unfamiliar patience. “Call Lynne.”

  Right. Nice try. She pointed at her throat.

  “Blue, you were born with working vocal cords. I know; I was there. You still haven’t told me everything. What happened to your voice?”

  All she had to do was explain this one last piece. It would start something like I kissed a woman in a red dress in the middle of the night and she sucked my voice out. No, I’m totally sane.

  No way. Some stories she couldn’t tell.

  The lights started to flicker a few hours into the storm. Tish made them noodles with peanut sauce and broccoli, and they lit a candle on the table, just in case the power went out. She didn’t push Blue for more and didn’t offer more herself. Instead, they took turns playing, then played one song together. Tish raised an eyebrow when Blue chose it.

  “‘Avenue A’ feels a little dark for a seventeen-year-old.”

  It was weird playing together, in so many ways. The obvious ones: playing with someone, when she almost always played alone; playing with a fiddler, which she’d never done. Then the others: the way the music brought memories up, things she’d forgotten. The flash of the copper clasp Mama wore around her wrist when she played, how Cass used to lean forward, elbows on her knees, to watch, the side glances Tish and Mama gave each other, as if they played only for each other. Now, playing with Tish, Blue kept looking at her, too, because playing together was about following and leading, exploring, trusting.

  Eyes closed, Blue could remember Mama backstage somewhere that reeked of cigarette smoke and the smell of beer. She watched her laughing as she caught Tish’s shoulder, turned her, and kissed her. Happy.

  She stopped midsong. Tish stopped, too.

  “What is it?”

  Blue stood up, left the guitar against the couch. Mama had kicked Tish out. Mama had agreed to raise her and Cass with Tish, and then told Tish to leave. She wanted you to grow up normal . . .

  Tish touched her wrist. “Blue, what’s going on?”

  She couldn’t even write. How could she explain? Tish was the bad one. Tish was trouble, she was a black eye, she was drinking and late nights, but she was also laughter and bad movies and help with homework. She was home, and Mama had left her.

  Mama had chosen to leave them without a parent instead of risking that they would grow up . . . like her? On the road, playing music with someone she loved?

  Why leave? Was she ashamed of being a musician?

  Before Tish could answer, the lights went out.

  In the dark, with only the flicker of the candlelight to combat it, the noise of the storm seemed much worse. Even so, it was softer than it would have been at home. No trees bending and groaning beneath the snow, so much less for the wind to whip through. The darkness swallowed everything.

  “I should get the generator going. Storm like this means no power crews working for a while.”

  No way to respond without light. Except . . . She played the first few lines again. Waited.

  “It’s not that easy to explain, Blue. When we first met, we both wanted everything. We were sure we were going to be famous, because we were so good. It’s what you learn—if you work hard, if you have talent, you’ll make it big. Only then you don’t. Eventually you find yourself somewhere you didn’t expect—with two kids and hair turning gray and no money—and being on the road can feel . . . foolish. Because if you were good, you’d be playing stadiums, you’d be on the radio.”

  The wind groaned against the house. “Clary wasn’t embarrassed to be a musician. She was embarrassed that she’d left home sure she could make it, and then ended up where she did. Rick offered her the chance to at least be on the stage she’d dreamed of, but she couldn’t take that last step. Sell herself out.”

  But she sold the two of you out. And me and Cass. She sold us out, too. Mama might have known fame wasn’t everything, but the alternative she’d picked had left all of them alone.

  Blue wanted to apologize. For Cass’s anger. For Mama saying she wanted her kids to be normal. For believing it had been Tish who walked out, left them all behind.

  Sorry. How could a five-letter word ever contain all that regret?

  Blue began to lose track of time. Day and night tumbled together, almost meaningless. Tish had a few rules, like having to get up every morning, having to wear clean clothes, and having to do the barn chores and eat. Aside from that, she could do as she wanted. She walked up and down the endless driveway in boots that seemed as lost as she felt. Why didn’t they give her a direction? Why hadn’t the woman in the red dress done anything to Tish?

  With no way to answer her questions, Blue retreated. She slept and she read books she found on the shelves. And she played guitar—sometimes alone, sometimes with Tish.

  She’d known she had a lot to learn, but Tish managed to show her things without making her feel like a beginner. They tried out all sorts of songs—lots of Dry Gully, but others as well, including ones from Tish’s new band. The new ones weren’t melancholy or angry. Instead, they were wickedly funny, the sort of humor that made her embarrassed and laugh at the same time.

  “So you have Clary’s ear, which is good. You pick things up quickly. You don’t play like her, though, and I think you’re not being fair to yourself to keep trying to.”

  She wanted to argue that she wasn’t trying to play like her mother, but fatigue kept her hand still.

  “Have you tried writing anything of your own?”

  The thought of sharing the song she’d scribbled down in Beyond made Blue’s insides curl. She had felt good while writing it, but the magic had vanished somewhere on the page. Now it seemed foolish.

  Tish studied her. “You have, haven’t you? Show me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Show me. Trust me, the first things I wrote were worse than you can imagine.”

  She opened her notebook and handed it over.

  Tish bobbed her head as she read. Not a wobble, a bob, as if she were hearing something. It wasn’t until she started to produce a few notes that Blue realized she was imagining music.

  “Do you have music for it already?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “So this is kind of what I get from it.” She took the guitar from Blue.

  She tried to listen instead. It wasn’t quite right. It sounded a bit like Dry Gully, lacking . . . It was an itch she couldn’t reach. She put one hand over the strings.

  “Okay, let me hear what you have.”

  It was like trying to raise a sunken log in a river. Blue grabbed for it anyway, the music slippery in her hands and the tune she made sputtering before finally catching.

  She caught Tish watching her fingers the way Blue remembered her focusing on Mama’s hands. She said nothing, though, just watched. Then when Blue tried it again, she joined in. The fiddle made it fuller, realer.

  “Now, if only you’d speak, we could hear how this song might sound.”

  If only.

  Days and weeks passed, the time stretching further and further. Around and around the thoughts went in Blue’s head. Tish had been part of their home no matter where they had lived. Mama had stolen that from them and then walked out on the conversation completely by dying.

  Mama had died.

  Superman’s Fortress of Solitude had nothing on hers. No one could find her, not even the woman in the red dress or the man in the blue shirt. As long as she abided by Tish’s rules, her world was snow, horses, music, and sleep. The woman in the red dress was a nightmare. Beyond, Barn Magic, Steve . . . They were simply dreams of another kind.

  Somehow it became late January. She knew only because Tish ma
de a point of telling her, laying a calendar out on the table.

  “This is when you arrived.” Her finger tapped on a page. “This is where we are now.” She turned the pages and selected a day. “A long time without you explaining much, Blue. I’m thinking we’ve almost reached the point where I need to call in some help.”

  Blue shrugged. She hadn’t thought about travel in . . . she had no idea how long. Everything was fuzzy, even how she’d ended up there.

  I can go.

  Tish shook her head. “Wrong answer. I don’t want you gone. I want you here. Really here, kid, not off in some hell of your own.”

  It wasn’t hell. It wasn’t anything, and that was exactly what she wanted.

  “I can help you. We can try to find Cass together.”

  No need. If the boots didn’t know where to find Cass, how could Tish?

  The next day, Tish gave her a bag of cowgirl clothes, stiff and smelling of a store, and told her to be ready to go at 5:30.

  She spent the day feeling as though the floor had been electrified, every step carrying the danger of pain. She didn’t want to leave the ranch. Outside, the world was cold and deadly. The librarian had been wrong. Kindness didn’t matter. This was the kind of world where someone could die in a ditch, unnoticed.

  Still, she put the clothes on and met Tish by the door with her guitar at the appointed hour. Tish had dressed up, too—a long black skirt, a black silk tank, some kind of woven turquoise-and-green jacket over it. She wore makeup—smoky smudges around her eyes—and silver earrings, and the scoop of her tank exposed the tattooed eye at the base of her throat. Over it all, she wore a long black coat, and she carried her fiddle case in one hand and spun the car keys around on the other.

  The driveway—the one that stretched forever when Blue walked it—took no time at all to travel. The road beyond was a canyon with walls built of snow. As they picked up speed, she could have sworn something moved by the side, a figure reaching out and then gone.

  They drove to a bar whose windows were lit with red and green lights left over from Christmas. Blue followed Tish inside, carrying her guitar. Every table was full, with more than a few people standing along the back wall. Older folks: men with slicked-back gray hair, dry-bleached blondes; cowboy boots and lariat ties. The bartender—a weathered woman with hair dyed fire-engine red—handed Tish a bottled water.