by John Searles
“West Shore?” I said as she opened the back door and all but pushed me outside. Emily Sanino glanced in the direction of the living room, where her husband’s feet pounded up the porch steps. “Left out of the driveway. Right at Bay Breeze, then follow it to West Shore. The firehouse will be in front of you. Across from the ocean.”
“Should I give Rose any message?”
“Message?” she said, eyes wide. “Absolutely not. Don’t say a word to her about this visit. Trust me. It’ll be better that way.”
With that, she closed the door and snapped off the light. I was left standing on the cement patio with only the moon to see by. A moment later, I heard her voice inside as she greeted her husband with all that false cheer lacing her voice once more.
I turned and walked through the alley to the street, her rushed directions blurring in my mind, along with everything else she told me. For nearly an hour, I moved through the sleepy streets of that oceanside neighborhood, making too many wrong turns before backtracking and looking up at last to see the fire department, with a pay phone out front. After dialing 411, I got the number of a taxi company. The man on the other end told me it would cost sixty dollars to get back to Dundalk. While he waited, I counted what I had, but it only totaled up to thirty-four. I asked if he could do it for half price, and the man said, “Yeah, if my driver only takes you halfway. How’s that sound?” I told him not very good then hung up. That’s when another idea occurred to me. Squinting at the buttons, I punched in a combination I hadn’t thought of in some time. After dumping in enough coins, the phone rang and a sleepy voice came on the line.
“Cora?” I said.
“Yes?”
“It’s Sylvie.”
“Sylvie? How did— Oh, RIBSPIN. That’s right. I forgot about that.”
You forgot a lot of things, I wanted to say, including me. “You told me I could call this number anytime I needed something.”
Last I’d seen Cora, she’d had on all that goopy green witch makeup, and even though it didn’t make sense, that’s how I pictured her now: lying in bed at the apartment she shared with her mother, noodly fingers brushing aside her mottled wig and gripping the receiver as her black lips formed the words, “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yes. And this is one of those times.”
“Sylvie, are you okay?’ she asked with genuine concern in her voice.
“I will be if you could come get me. I need a ride home.”
She fumbled with the phone. “I’m sorry. But I lent my car to Dan. You know, the Hulk’s owner. We have a bit of a free trade situation. His dog. My car. Not sure who gets the better end of the deal. Except my mom, she likes having the dog around. Says the Hulk makes her feel loved. As if I don’t give her enough love . . .”
I’d forgotten Cora’s habit of rambling, and I cut her off to say something I couldn’t keep in any longer, “I saw the two of you. Kissing, I mean.”
Silence. While I listened to the faint electric hum on the line, I stared at the fire department. Through the glass windows, I glimpsed the tops of the red trucks inside, the jumble of lights and ladders. The air felt so impossibly damp it was hard to imagine anything catching fire for miles around.
At last, Cora let out a breath. Something about the sound washed away the image of her in that witch makeup. Instead, I saw her the way I did when we first met: holding her clipboard, dressed in her carefully pressed clothing, with her ankle bracelet and that shark or dolphin tattoo, not to mention her intentions to make me dress warmer and see a doctor again about my ear. “I am not going to lie to you, Sylvie. That’s wrong, and I’ve already done plenty of wrong by you. The truth is, I never thought I’d get caught up in the sort of thing that happened with your sister. But I don’t have to tell you the way Rose can make things happen. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I said, thinking of Dot, thinking of the night in Ocala when we snuck into my parents’ lecture, and thinking most of all of her call that lured us to the church that snowy night last winter.
“Well, she also has this way of making you feel like the most special person in the world when she wants to. That is, until something changes and she doesn’t make you feel that way anymore. That feeling—it was too much to take. I asked the department to switch me to a new case. I’m sorry.”
There was more hurt in my voice than expected when I told her, “You could have said good-bye.”
“I know. Again, I’m sorry. It’s just, well, I’m not always as good at things as I set out to be. But I’d like to help find a way to get you home. Tell me where you are.”
“Rehoboth, Delaware.”
“Rehoboth? Why?”
“I came to find out who has been leaving all that food on our steps.”
“I really don’t think you should be there, Sylvie. It doesn’t seem like a good idea. I’d leave whoever it is alone. Now let’s focus on getting you out of there. Maybe you should just call Rose.”
It was clear Cora would be of no help, so I told her I would then said a rushed good-bye and got off the phone. Since no part of me intended to reach out to my sister, I did what I should have in the first place and tried the number on the card Heekin had given me. His answering machine picked up. I rambled into it about where I was and what I’d learned about Emily Sanino and Saint Julia’s. In the middle of it, I realized how desperate I must have sounded, so I stopped short and hung up on that call too.
After that, there was only the crashing of the ocean waves, the light of the moon, with me beneath it, lingering by the pay phone for a long while. I looked at Emily Sanino’s shopping lists—flour, unsalted butter, and all the rest made me think of Boshoff and his cookbooks and poems and his sick wife beside him in bed. And then I had a thought and picked up the phone again.
Four-one-one connected me right through and Dereck answered on the first ring, as though he had been waiting for me all along. “Of course I’ll come get you,” he said when I explained where I was and that I needed a ride. “But you’ll have to sit tight. It’ll take me a bit to get there.”
I was so relieved that I didn’t mind waiting. After we hung up, I sat down on the curb. If I’d had my journal I would have used the time to put down the events of the day, beginning with the visit to the nature preserve with Heekin and ending with the moment in Emily Sanino’s living room. I would have read over what I’d already written about Abigail and the things that happened that summer too. Instead, I tried to think of all the places I might have dropped it: in the dark of my uncle’s theater, in Heekin’s VW bug, down in the foundation across the street from our house.
At last, I looked up to see Dereck’s jeep pull into the lot. I climbed inside, feeling relief but also an unexpected awkwardness. Now that he and my sister were over, what connection was left between us?
We pulled onto the street, and it was as though he knew the way by heart, making rights and lefts without checking the map on the floor between the seats. “Do you mind if I ask what you were doing here?” he said after a while, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Trying to figure some things out,” I told him, which was the simplest explanation.
“And did you?” was all he asked.
“Yes and no. Really, I ended up with more questions.”
“About your parents?”
“Them, and my sister, too.”
Dereck didn’t respond. We reached the highway and picked up speed. The haphazard rise and fall of lights all around, and the constant shudder of the canvas top, made it difficult to talk. We tried anyway, but it was awkward small talk—details about those turkeys mostly—and it made me think again how quickly any connection was dissipating between us. At last, we passed a WELCOME TO MARYLAND sign, and Dereck took his ruined hand off the steering wheel and pointed to the floor between the seats. “By the way, I brought something to show you.”
“A map?” I said and laughed a little, despite myself.
“No. Look underneath.”
&nbs
p; I peeled the map away and found a chestnut brown yearbook from Dundalk High School, the year 1988 in raised gold numbers across the top.
“It’s from my senior year. I grabbed it out of my junk drawer when you called. I want to prove something to you. Page sixty-four.”
With that same hand, Dereck clicked on the interior light. I opened the book, and a newspaper clipping slipped out onto my lap. I left it there and turned the pages until arriving at the one he specified. “A picture of the exchange student from Peru?”
He smiled, showing those wolfish teeth. “Not that photo, Sylvie. The one beneath it.”
“A group shot of the Honors Society?”
“Recond row, rour reople rover rom ra reft.”
I traced my finger up to the second row, four people over from the left until landing on Dereck, grinning big and wide.
“Ree, R-I’m rot a rope, rafter rall.”
“I never thought you were a dope. Even though you make it hard to believe considering how much time you spend talking like a cartoon dog.”
Dereck laughed, and the moment made me feel close to him again. “Well, thanks for your faith in me.”
Before closing the book, I stared a little longer at the photo. “You look happy.”
“And I don’t now?”
“You do. It’s just, I don’t know, a different look on your face back then.”
“Well, that’s when I had all my fingers. That’s also before I realized high school would end, and I’d actually need to make a plan for my life.”
“Couldn’t you still make a plan?”
“Maybe. First, I have to get through the last of the season with the turkeys. Thanksgiving is only three more days away as of tomorrow.”
I thought of those mornings when I paused on the path to stare at the birds in the field, how empty it would feel without them, how empty it would feel without Dereck there too. We pulled off the highway and navigated the dark roads of Dundalk until turning onto Butter Lane at last. I told him to go slow, shining his high beams on the pavement as I looked out for my journal. He even pulled off so I could look around by the foundation too. But my little violet book wasn’t there, either.
It had only been twelve hours, more or less, yet it felt like ages since that morning when I first left the house and met Heekin at the end of the lane. Rose’s truck was still in the driveway, her bedroom light on. Otherwise the house was dark, except, of course, for the light in the basement, which filled me with the same nervous fear as it had for weeks.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I told Dereck. “I have a little money for gas if you—”
He held up that hand with the missing fingers. “This one’s on me. I’m happy you called, Sylvie. Feel free to do it again if you ever need my help.”
I told him I would then reached for the door handle, remembering how he hugged me last time, how his stubble brushed against me as he pressed his lips to my cheek and the warm, earthy smell of him enveloped me. I wondered if he might do it again, but the moment did not present itself. Probably those four years between us, I thought, all the differences they made. And so I opened the door and got out, that newspaper clipping from inside his yearbook slipping off my lap and falling to the ground as I did. I reached down, picked it up. “What’s this?”
“Oh. That’s the other thing I meant to show you. The article that came out after the freak accident I told you about. The one that cost me my fingers.”
I glanced at the headline, some part of me expecting to see the name Albert Lynch, since those were the only stories I paid attention to anymore. Instead, the headline read simply: DECK COLLAPSES, DOZENS OF TEENS INJURED.
“You can hang on to it,” Dereck told me. “Personally, I’d rather forget that drunken afternoon. But like I told you, it was big news around here.”
I stuck the clipping in my pocket and thanked him again for the ride. Dereck flicked on his high beams and waited for me to get inside before backing out of the driveway. He beeped his horn a few times, and I flashed the porch light to say good-bye.
After he was gone, I went upstairs and changed and washed up before making my way back down to the kitchen. Rose had replenished the supply of Popsicles, but I was tired of them. Apparently, she had tossed whatever Emily Sanino had baked, since it wasn’t on the steps or the counter.
I skipped any sort of dinner and stood beside the kitchen table, reading the article Dereck had given me. The story confirmed everything he had told me about that accident and how he lost his fingers. Two photos accompanied the article. One showed the splintered deck in pieces on the ground, the toppled grill and kegs and broken chairs all around. The other was of the lawn scattered with teenagers, some lying on the grass as paramedics attended to them, others standing in the background, unharmed.
I was about to put down the clipping when I remembered Dereck saying that my sister had been at the party. Just as I’d done with his yearbook photo, I traced my thumb over the crowd until, sure enough, I spotted Rose standing blank faced in the crowd. I stared at her fuzzy black-and-white image a moment before noticing the person beside her too.
I must have stared at that image for a solid ten minutes until I put the clipping aside at last and went to the cabinet beneath the sink. When I swung it open, the garbage can was empty, a fresh bag placed inside. I shut the cabinet and looked at that clipping again, tracing my finger over the people in the crowd until stopping in the same spot. This time, I put the paper down and walked to the front door, stepping out into the moonlight and heading for the trash cans my sister must have dragged to the street earlier.
Back in Rehoboth, I’d lifted the lid and used my finger to puncture the bag. I did the same here. Once more, foul odors rose up as I dug inside, churning through the entire bag until my hands grew sticky from handling Popsicle wrappers and crumpled paper towels and squashed soda cans. When I finished with that bag, I reached for the one below. The work wasn’t strenuous, but something had me breathing heavily anyway.
And then I felt the first of what I was searching for: slim, like a firecracker between my fingers with the same sort of wick at the tip, blunt and brittle from use. And not long after I had found one, others began to appear. Like some rabid raccoon, I tipped over the can and knelt on the ground picking among all the papers and wrappers and trash smeared with frosting. And when I located them all—twenty-five slim pink candles—I held them up in the dark. Even though they’d long since been blown out, it didn’t matter. It was as though they lit the entire sky above. It was as though they lit my way when I stepped into the church that snowy night the winter before, because at long last, I knew who it was I had seen. At long last, I knew.
Chapter 20
Emergency Exits
May I please have seconds? I don’t want to be in the way . . . Sylvie? I have the same dream almost every night . . . When I say it is both good and bad, what I mean is that it starts out good—my mother is showing me the emergency exit rows, explaining about the lighted path in the aisles, the oxygen masks that drop from the ceiling—but peaceful as it begins, the dream always turns bad. It is that way with most things in life, my life anyway. Probably, it is the way things will go during my time here with you and your family—even though that is not what I want . . . My wish is that things stay good. My wish is that we stay friends, Sylvie, always and forever . . .
Even the greatest blizzards begin with one or two seemingly innocent snowflakes drifting down from the sky. That’s how it was with those simple words of gratitude—thank you—spoken by Abigail after she tucked herself into Rose’s bed and squeezed her eyes shut: they were the innocuous beginnings of all that was to come.
But I should not be talking about snowstorms, not yet. It was summer still, the sunniest and hottest I’d experienced in my life. Odd as it may sound, considering my sister had been plucked from our family and Abigail deposited in her place, it also came to be the happiest summer I recalled in a long time, that last summer my parents were alive.
When my father returned the following morning, he carried the empty suitcase Rose and I shared. She had no need for it there, I heard him tell my mother when she met him at the door, and seeing it would only keep thoughts of leaving the place thriving in her mind. Those weren’t his ideas, but protocol at Saint Julia’s, he explained. According to him, that same protocol prohibited family contact for the first ninety days to allow students time to detach from their former lives and acclimate to a new environment, one with rigid structure, firm values, and a strictly enforced disciplinary code. That was the most I heard him say about my sister, since my mother began telling him about all that had transpired in his absence—most important, how Albert Lynch and his daughter had shown up the day before, how she was with us still.
“With us?” my father said. “Downstairs?”
“No,” my mother told him. “Why don’t you come with me, Sylvester? I’ll show you.”
Since my mother had shut Rose’s bedroom door the day before, Abigail had not been outside the room and no one had been inside—as far as I knew, anyway. I assumed my father would make immediate adjustments to the sleeping arrangements, and since he left the suitcase by the stairs, I carried it to the second floor to see how things would play out. When I reached the top, though, my parents were already stepping out of Rose’s room and closing the door behind them. My father came to me, took the suitcase, and gave me a hug hello, before asking, “How would you feel, sunshine, if our guest stayed in your sister’s room a little longer?”
“Guest?” I couldn’t help repeating.
“Yes, Sylvie. You wouldn’t mind if Abigail stayed in your sister’s room while she’s here, would you?”
