by Gina Linko
She reminded me of Annaliese. Just a more brash, real version of Annaliese, without the ridiculous collection of cowboy boots and love of all things country-western. I had a sudden flash of Annaliese and me doing the line dance at the sophomore spring fling. She had worn that belt buckle with the bull horns. Oh God. I smiled and flopped back onto my pillow. It made my throat tighten a little bit. I thought of the old comics that Annaliese and I had been drawing right before the day with Sophie. Thinly veiled comics about our teachers at school. Poking fun at Mr. Vergara with his skinny jeans. Mrs. Temperance and her ’80s perm. I laughed out loud.
It sounded so sad as it echoed off the walls of my room.
It hurt to remember how easy things used to be. I had been on a trajectory. My life was going in the right direction. It was clean and uncomplicated. How I missed it. How much I had taken for granted.
I flashed back to the memory of Cody telling me how my hair was the exact shade of a Hershey’s Kiss. I used to love that. I would tell people that story. I thought it was so cute. Now, when I thought of that, of Cody and me together, I wanted to punch him. Just punch him right in the jaw. I knew it wasn’t fair. But it all just seemed so … innocent, so self-indulgent. Our stupid surface romance. I wanted to scream at my former self: You don’t even know what’s important! You have no handle on things! Wake up! I cringed when I thought of how our biggest fight had been over how he hadn’t texted me when he told me he would one night. Not over anything actually important, like when he became frustrated with me when I tried to talk to him about music, about deeper things, about dreams and the future, about life and what it meant to me.
I thought of the concert when I had first played Requiem. It was my debut with the Chicago Junior Symphony. When I got offstage, Cody had met me with one red rose, and he looked all handsome and preppy in his khakis and collared shirt. “What did you think?” I asked, still a little out of breath and existing on that other plane, the one where I didn’t just play music, I played emotion, life, possibility.
“Great,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. He bounced on his heels. He checked his cell phone. I still had goose bumps, feeling the magic of the music, right there, coursing under my skin. “We can still meet up with everybody downtown if we hurry.” He yanked on my elbow.
“Oh,” I said, “yeah.” I forced a smile and hurried out with my friends.
Because I knew he was just being Cody. He was popular and hot. A good prank partner. For his senior prom, we won king and queen, and we went up to the podium wearing those goofy glasses with the big noses and mustaches. We dressed up as Fred and Daphne from Scooby-Doo for Halloween. We sailed on the weekends on Lake Michigan with his parents. We went to all the fun parties. He made me cooler, more popular, and, fluck, he was fun.
But he didn’t get me. I knew that even then, and it made me feel shallow.
I shook the memories away. Annaliese had tried after Sophie. She had tried. Cody had given up easily. And I had not been surprised. I had pushed them both away. I had pushed everyone away.
I grabbed my phone, finally working up the courage to call Mia-Joy. When she answered, I broke down. “I’m so sorry, Mia-Joy.”
“I know, Corrine. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to you at the funeral or that I—”
“Really. It’s okay.” And Mia-Joy sounded so fine. She sounded honest and forgiving. She always was.
“At the cemetery, we shared stories about her. Celebrated her life,” Mia-Joy said. “I missed you there. You would’ve liked it, I think.”
“Celebrated her life,” I repeated. And I tried to hold on to that phrase.
Mia-Joy told me some of the funny stories that people shared about Granny Lucy when she was younger, teaching high school typing, how she used to slap kids’ knuckles with a ruler if they weren’t paying attention. How she used to wear her hair in cornrows, enough beads at the ends of them to make music every time she turned her head. I laughed with Mia-Joy and let her talk. She went on and on, and I listened, glad that I could at least do that for her.
“I should go,” she said after a long while, sighing into the phone. “It’s super late.”
But I had one more thing I wanted to ask. “Mia-Joy, tell me what you know about Rennick Lane. Are you guys friends?”
“Why?”
“He knows things about me,” I said.
“Corrine, he’s Ren from the Pen. From school.”
I backtracked in my mind a little bit. Liberty was a big place, and it was true that I had gotten in the habit of purposely not looking into people’s faces, but I heard things. Rennick Lane was Ren from the Pen? The kid that everyone talked about last fall when he came to our school? That seemed crazy.
“Penton Charter?” I asked.
“Got kicked out. Had to go to public school. It’s no big secret.”
“And what was it for?” I had heard things. And I could conjure the memory of Rennick’s silhouette now. Always alone, that movie-star rebel look about him. Leather jacket in the winter. Jeans and a T-shirt. Too cool.
“I don’t know. Nobody really does, Corrine. Fighting, I heard. But he doesn’t really seem the type, does he?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“He seems like he knows you. Acts like it. I thought you knew him.”
“I thought you knew him.”
“I’ll tell you what. I watched him stick up for that boy with Down syndrome, Jarvis, you know who I’m talking about?”
“I do.”
“Kids were being awful to him in the cafeteria. That one greasy kid, Pollack? He actually shoved pudding in Jarvis’s face. It was ugly. Rennick took that douchebag by the collar and made him apologize to Jarvis. It was something.”
“Yeah?” I said, feeling something for Rennick now. Pride?
“He eats with Jarvis once in a while now. He seems nice enough. I don’t like to believe the gossip.”
“Me either,” I said, thinking of what kids probably said about me, what I knew they said about me. “Thanks.”
“Corrine?”
“What?”
“No one, and I mean no one, thinks that the death of a ninety-year-old lady is your fault.”
I swallowed hard. “Thanks,” I said, and hung up quickly before Mia-Joy could hear the tears in my voice.
I woke up and my hands were itchy in that way they sometimes got. They couldn’t sit still, tapping out invisible rhythms on my palms or air-playing some invisible fiddle. Normally, I could practice the nerves out of my hands. I would grab my violin, and within the first few minutes I would just settle in, become completely still, aside from the motion of my bow on the strings and the flutter of my fingers from one string to another. In those moments, I felt so bold and sure about my place in the world.
I missed the violin. I missed feeling good about myself.
I didn’t even get out of my pajamas, just clicked in the next tape from Mom. My hands needed something to do.
This was a new lady. Room 232, the tape said. Lila Twopenny. Her voice shook, like older people’s sometimes do, but I could quickly tell that although Mrs. Twopenny was at the end of her days, she still had her mind. She spoke articulately about dancing in a ballet company, working as a bit actress in seven films. And as she got going, her voice trilled like a songbird.
She talked about her husband, Dodge, and her children, all girls. One named Nancy who died as an infant. Two other girls, Clara and Ruth. Twins.
I drew the delicate line of her nose, the upturn at the end, the high-arched eyebrows.
“Ruth had the touch,” Mrs. Twopenny said. My ears perked up, as well as the hairs on the back of my neck.
I held my pencil still, very still. And then I hit REWIND, listened to that line one more time. “Ruth had the touch.”
“Yes?” This was my mom’s voice on the tape, interviewing. Soothing, a little bit sleepy.
“She had what they said was a healer’s hand. That’s what we
called it back then. We didn’t have any science to explain it away. Plus it made it easier for us all to believe in miracles like that.”
Mom had perked up now. “What miracles, Lila? Can you tell me?”
Mrs. Twopenny cleared her throat, and I heard objects scuffling around on a table—getting a drink of water maybe? “I reckon Ruth knew at a young age. It hit her around twelve, I would say. She would heal right quick when she got scratched climbing the old oak down by the pond. But the first time I really stopped and paid attention was when Clara broke her wrist falling off of Dodge’s old white mare, Lucky. I pressed them bones in my own hand, could darn near feel the separation of the big bone in her wrist.” Mrs. Twopenny paused here, and I could picture her showing my mother where on the arm it occurred. I realized I was clamping down on my own wrist, feeling the bones, guessing whether it was the one near the thumb or the pinky.
“We lived in Georgia at the time and rode all the way into Macon to get that bone set by a doctor who knew what he was doing. At the time, I thought it just so sweet that Ruth held Clara’s hand, her wrist, with this serious-type expression on her face the whole way. It was right bumpy. A long ride in the back of our truck. Anyways, we got to the hospital and Clara’s wrist was completely healed. Those medical doctors done looked at me and Dodge like we was crazy.”
“Huh,” Mom said. No one spoke for a long moment. Finally, Mom asked what I was thinking. “Were there other times?” Her voice was respectful, not necessarily believing.
“Oh sure,” Mrs. Twopenny said. I was thinking of the crawdad. Of Rennick. “Ruth couldn’t always fix things. Didn’t know exactly how it all worked, could only do it when she saw blue, never did quite know what that meant but …” Mrs. Twopenny’s voice got very small now.
My mouth fell open. I dropped the pencil. She saw blue.
“Our old reverend called her a witch,” she whispered.
Mom said something. Something about how God works in mysterious ways, but I didn’t hear it.
I rewound the tape, listened to it again, and then I let it play out. Mrs. Twopenny talked at length about her daughters, her life, and it was interesting, but no more talk of the touch. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Saw blue. The touch.
And then, near the end of the tape, she talked about her grandsons. Two of them.
Cale and Rennick.
It was easier to track him down than I thought it would be.
Holly, one of Mom’s favorite nurses, answered the phone at Chartrain. “Does Mrs. Twopenny have a grandson that’s my age?”
“Yes. Rennick. He lives with his grandfather, Mrs. Twopenny’s husband. Why?” Holly sounded like she had maybe said too much. I knew there was always the patient confidentiality stuff.
“Nothing, Holly. Thanks.”
I used Mom’s laptop, found the Twopenny house.
And even though I knew that it would be easier to call him, I didn’t want to. I had to do this in person. This was too huge. He knew stuff. Major amounts of stuff. I was convinced of that now. His mother had the touch, or whatever you wanted to call my curse.
I started up my mom’s minivan, glancing behind me at the empty seat that Sophie used to ride in. She used to love to sing in the backseat of the car. Mom and Sophie had had this ridiculous fascination with all things Elvis. I could picture Sophie singing along with him in her car seat—her high little voice teetering over the lyrics of “Jailhouse Rock.” I sighed and typed Rennick’s address into Mom’s GPS.
I found the Twopenny house easily. It was out in the country, past the Garden District, near the Audubon Zoo in the woodsy part near Lake Calhoun. The road had ancient live oaks lining each side of it, bending toward each other in a canopy of kudzu. The street turned from pavement, to gravel, to really just a worn path, and then I could see a cluster of four houses ahead at the end of the lonely cul-de-sac. The Twopenny house was small, painted an obnoxious yellow, but it looked well maintained, happy, if that’s possible. And it was nestled right at the edge of the lake.
I walked up the white-painted porch steps and knocked three times on the door. No answer. I hadn’t been counting on this. I took a deep breath and knocked again. Nothing.
But I knew that I couldn’t just leave. I would lose my nerve, and he knew things. I had too much to talk to him about. Too much to ask. Too much that mattered.
I sat down on the porch steps and decided to wait. It was hot and clammy out, but the porch offered a little bit of protection from the sun. I cracked my knuckles and waited, making a mental list of what I had to ask him.
Your mother had the touch?
How can I control it?
What is it?
Who else do you know who has the touch?
How do you know it’s electrical?
I got up, brushed off the seat of my shorts, and walked along the side of the house, peered into the backyard. The far side of the property backed right up to the lake, with a small patch of woods to the west. A gorgeous little arbor sat down near the lake, with an old-fashioned swing hanging from it, magnolias creeping up on all sides. A chipmunk stopped in its path near a live oak, standing up on its hind legs to inspect me.
“Hi,” I said, and it scampered off. I walked into the backyard, eyeing the large vegetable garden, and noticed that even though the gardens seemed overgrown in general, they were all blooming and thriving like crazy, overtaking every possible walking surface—the sidewalk, the modest lawn, the small fountain near the shed.
I heard a voice then, and splashing. My first instinct was to turn around, go back to my car. But then I saw a figure, large and brown, toward the edge of the lake. My first thought was, How did a bear get down here in Louisiana?
But a tennis ball came flying past me into the yard and the bear followed it, and by then I had put together that this was no bear, but just a behemoth of a dog. It was taller than my waist, its width ridiculous. Paws the size of oven mitts. It ran right past me, chased down the tennis ball. Then it stopped and shook itself, covering me in lake water.
“Sorry!” a voice called, and I put my hand to my eyes, shielding them from the sun. I could see it was Rennick. A shirtless, soaking-wet Rennick.
I gulped hard, telling myself not to stare. “I’m sorry,” I began. “I just had to come. I want to talk.”
“Yeah, I’m glad,” he said. He stopped to shake himself too, not unlike the dog. I couldn’t help but notice that he was thin, yes, but wiry, built. Defined. And when he reached me in the yard, I tried to keep the blush from climbing into my neck, my cheeks, but I knew it was useless.
The dog joined us, tennis ball in mouth, as if awaiting an introduction. I was so glad to have something else to look at, something that wouldn’t turn me into a slack-jawed moron.
“This is Bouncer,” Rennick said, taking the ball from the dog’s mouth, throwing it farther than I could see in the sun. The dog took off. “Want something to drink? I have some stuff in the garage,” he said.
I nodded, trying to smooth down my ignored and frizzled hair. I wondered how he could seem so easy, so confident.
I followed him toward the small garage, stealing glances at his tanned shoulders, the way his hair curled up at the nape of his neck. I stopped abruptly when I got inside the door of what I first had thought was just a junky shed. I guess I expected lawn equipment, maybe a rusted-out Chevrolet, an old boat, something that screamed Louisiana hillbilly, but this was altogether different, although the old country honky-tonk music played softly from a radio on the counter.
The garage was a large, bare space, with a high ceiling and exposed rafters. There were red-painted cabinets along the nearest wall, along with a sink and a mini fridge. In the middle of the room sat a long wooden table, just plywood on sawhorses. On it was a bunch of equipment, electrical cables, batteries, wires, things I couldn’t name. Books were everywhere. Piled in corners, stacks as tall as me. Books open on the table. Books on the floor, near the worn black leather couch in the back. But what
really got me was the far wall. It was covered, absolutely covered, all the way up to the rafters, in canvases, papers, and tackboard. Painting after painting after painting. At first look, they seemed to be put up haphazardly, but if you studied them, they weren’t. Each one added to the ones near it. They built on each other. Some kind of messy, intricate design. They were all the same kind of painting, but each one was unique, just a study in color, in shading, in tone, in complements. They weren’t rainbowish, no. More like … descriptions.
Before I knew it, I had walked past the lab table and was standing right in front of the color wall studying the canvases up close, their brushstrokes, the technique. “They’re beautiful,” I said.
Rennick just laughed a little under his breath, but I heard it there, the twinge of nervousness behind his cool demeanor.
But for a second, it’s like I forgot why I was there. I forgot myself in those paintings. They weren’t rainbows, they weren’t color wheels, not haphazard combinations or streaks of colors, but rather descriptions of things. Things that defied words and description, things that didn’t really have names or titles. They were something akin to feelings. Truths. Shown through patterns and movement, through the slightest variations of blues. Shown through the arch of a slow gradation from yellow to orange, through the fierce growth from white to red to purple.
I saw … friendship? Patience? Pride? No, those words only hinted at what was in these paintings. It was indescribable. Like the feeling you get when you’re eight years old and you wake up on Christmas morning, everything in front of you. Or how it feels to look into someone’s eyes and know that they just really get you.
Or how it feels to do something right, something selfless—that floaty feeling underneath your ribs. This was here, spelled out in his paintings.
I was mesmerized.
But then it kicked on. Inside me. That roiling flame in my chest, and I was right back inside myself. Right back to the same old problem. I cleared my throat and turned around, embarrassed by how caught up I had gotten in the paintings.
