Warren’s leg twitched up and down, and he started to skip-count by nines. Then he stopped himself, lifted his arm, and clamped a hand on Adrian’s bony shoulder. Squeezed until the boy’s shaking subsided.
[49]
That summer, she came to my house almost every day. One morning, when she had stepped into the porch, she pointed at the second door and asked where it went. I was about to say, Bathroom, but then decided if she needed one, she would discover my lie. A pointless lie. I had nothing to hide down there. “Basement,” I said. “Just a dirty basement.”
Of course, she did not wait for an invitation. She yanked open the door, patted along the wall, and descended even when she had not located a light switch.
I liked the fact she appeared to have no fears.
“Wow, it’s dark down here.”
I was beside her. Could smell the fragrance that was caught in her hair, some type of flower, the faintest odour of sour milk and oats on her breath. I knew she had showered, then eaten cereal for breakfast.
“Where are you?” she said. “I can’t see a freaking thing.”
“I’m here. Behind you.”
A light breeze on my cheeks as she turned.
“Um, lights?”
Quick yank, and the light flickered, then glowed.
“Well, that doesn’t help much.”
“Give it a minute. Your eyes will adjust. There’s not much to see anyway.”
She was turning, blinking. “You’re right. Not much to see.”
“We can go up.”
“In a minute. It’s cooler down here. And it smells like my grandfather.”
“Bad?”
“No, just old. I like it.”
I appreciated the fact that she no longer spoke in paragraphs full of run-on sentences.
Turning around again, she said, “And holy wallpaper. Someone got real creative.”
“Yeah, my mother. I think.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe it felt like an accomplishment? Maybe it was one place in the house that looked clean?
“Cozies the place right up.”
“Do you think?”
“Of course not.” Tinkling laughter.
I tried to laugh along, though as usual, I did not understand the humour.
She walked to the corner with the pile of pieces from my contraption. I had not bothered to clean it up. Unfortunately. Now she was going to ask me about it. How would I explain my stupid pastime?
“What’s all this?”
See? I knew it.
“Just something I built.”
“For?”
“I don’t know. One thing connected to the next. Cause and effect.”
“What’s the purpose? What did it do?”
I inadvertently glanced behind me, saw the discarded doll in a darkened corner. Tape smothering its face. I hoped she would not notice it. That would be impossible to explain. I made a mental note, put that doll on my list of “Things to Hide.”
“No purpose.”
She knelt down, picked up a piece of pipe, rolled a ball around on her palm, picked up the spoon. I was grateful the nail had come unglued, was nowhere in sight.
“I think in French they call these things usine à gaz.”
I laughed. A joke. Maybe?
“I’m serious! They call it gasworks. You know, a place with all the pipes sticking out of the roof, steam and smoke going everywhere? Can you just imagine it? Any minute the whole place might explode.”
“How do you know that?”
“You didn’t?”
“No.” For once.
“Point for me! I read it. I read a lot, you know, when I can manage to shut myself up.” Clicking two pipes together, she said, “Now, let’s fix this thing up. This is going to be super cool.”
I was surprised and delighted at her unexpected enthusiasm. As a team, we spent the next three hours rebuilding the usine à gaz. It was almost the same configuration, only we shortened two of the elastic bands, and I had to saw one of the pipes in half otherwise the ball travelling through (she pointed out) lost too much momentum. The alterations were successful. The spoon snapped forward with greater force, but it was much further from the wall.
“What should we do with it?” She tapped her foot, paced in circles. “Hmmm.” Then, “I got it! I got it! Don’t move. I’ll be back in a second,” and she stomped up the stairs. The screen door slammed.
I waited, in the dim light. Two minutes later she was back, dropped a box full of small paint tubes on the concrete, then started fixing two large pieces of paper onto the wall, masking tape ripped with her teeth. Once the paper was in place, she reset the machine, squirted paint on the spoon, and then triggered the system. It went through the motions, then snap, the spoon flew forward, stopped suddenly, and the paint, adhering to the law of inertia, continued in motion toward the paper. A splatter in crimson red. It made a beautiful pattern. A beautiful sound.
Another reset, another colour.
“Don’t stand there with your mouth open. C’mon. Choose a colour. Let’s shift this thing to a different angle.”
“It would be easier to move the paper.”
“Good point.”
We untaped and taped.
When the tubes were empty, we leaned against the opposite wall, stared at the wet artwork, a mess of blobs and drips. And the stains on the wallpaper.
“Will your mom be pissed?”
“At what?”
“We ruined her wall.”
“She won’t care. She never comes down here.”
“Good. Cause look what we made! It looks ahhh-mazing!”
“Not bad,” I said.
“Not bad? Seriously. It’s modern art. Fine art. We could sell it for big bucks, you know.”
“Do you think?”
“Of course not. I’m kidding.”
“Yeah. I knew that.” I did not know that.
She turned to me, “Why do you build them?”
“I don’t know. I started building them for my sister. For her amusement. She liked to watch me make them and watch them go. I always let her start them.” I thought it would make her feel powerful.
“You got a sister? No way! Lucky you!”
“Had.”
“What does that mean? Had.”
“She’s gone.”
“As in, um, lives somewhere else?”
“No.”
“With a rich old uncle in Switzerland or something? Looking after goats?”
“No.”
“Some other totally sucky family because you’re not part of it?”
I shook my head. I had never spoken to anyone about Button. It was difficult to squeeze out the words. They stuck in my throat like a dried burr. “As in. I don’t know. I don’t know. She’s just gone. You know. Gone forever.”
For once, my friend said nothing. Was actually silent. Like, really silent. She came over to me and put her two skinny arms around my chest and squeezed. I just stood there, spine straight, body rigid, but she did not let go of me. It was a long minute, maybe more. It seemed like it was more. I could smell her hair, her skin, her clothes. Sweetness. Orange blossom, I determined. I could identify the warmth in her core. I had never experienced this before. It made me feel the same way as when I saw those kindergartners singing at the Christmas concert when I was a child. That moment when I was holding newborn Button in my arms. Their untainted voices echoing off the metal roof. A moving uneasiness, like bands around my pulse points.
How to explain this? In her arms, I was a hollow channel, water pulled in on the top, but flowing straight through.
I wanted to cap the bottom. Cap the bottom and tape the whole thing up. But I did not know how.
Then as quickly as she grip
ped me, she let me go. When her body moved away from mine, my skin erupted in goosebumps.
“I just had to do that,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, but I just had to.”
“Um, okay.”
“And now!” She stuck her index finger in the air. “I have to go.”
“For lunch?”
“No, for a secret mission. I have a plan. It just came to me as I was compressing the marrow in your bones. There’s something I really need to do.”
“What?”
“Secret missions are secret, idiot!” And she bolted up the stairs. “See you later, alligator.”
The screen door slammed. Again.
Two full days went by. I was beginning to feel irritated. I did not like jokes. Or games. I peeled her artwork off the basement wall, rolled it up, and decided to deliver it. If she did not want to be my friend, that was her problem. She answered the door on the second knock.
“Perfect timing!” she said. “Come, come with me. Now. I need to show you what I made.” Squealing, hands flapping. “It is so beyond cool. So much beyond cool, it’s cooltastic. Super coolistic. I’m really excited. I’ve definitely got some major skills. Major! Hurry up. C’mon, c’mon. Leave your sneakers on. Who cares.”
I went down into her basement. My old neighbour’s basement. I had never been there before, and it was much brighter and cleaner than I had imagined. There were windows, walls, beige carpeting, several wooden shelves full of novels. In the corner was a yellow sheet, covering something that was unusually lumpy.
She gently removed the sheet and, balling it in her arms, she bowed slightly, cried, “Voilà! Mon usine à gaz!”
Similar to mine, but with gears and weights. Very clever. “You built that?”
“Yep. All by my lonesome. My mom bought me a couple things, but the rest of it I found in the shed out there. You wouldn’t believe what he’s got poked away. A fortune’s worth of stuff.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m kidding. C’mon! Just junk.”
Ugh.
“I smell something minty. Spearmint?”
“Dental floss. I ran out of string.”
“Innovative.”
“That’s me. Now shut up with the questions, and stand there.” She pointed to a gap in the machine. On either side of the gap she had positioned back-scratchers. Cylindrical lengths of painted wood, a plastic hand poked on the end of each.
“Now watch.”
She lifted a small weight off a ledge and let it dangle. It descended slowly, making a gear wind, which tightened an elastic, which moved a pencil, and so on. Eventually, the final gear turned, pulling a thread, and the two back-scratchers closed together. I remained between them, and the wood and plastic hands grazed my front and back, applied the slightest bit of pressure.
I stepped back. Put my fingers on the places where the back-scratchers had touched me. “You made this? By yourself?”
“For you!”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
“What? You can’t be serious. Were you not here? Did you not see what happened?”
I blinked. I thought I had missed another joke.
“Because you are my first and only friend. Because I like you very, very much. And because more than anyone else I’ve ever known, you need hugs, silly,” she said, and started to reset her machine. “And here you have an unlimited number of great big giant hugs!”
[50]
Detective Reed stood in his living room. She was no longer smirking. Instead, her forehead was wrinkled with lines, mouth turned into a sneer.
“You’re not supposed to be talking to me,” Warren said. Stephen sat next to his leg, banging his heavy tail on the floor. Sixteen, seventeen, eight —
“Where do you think this is? The big city?” She glanced over her shoulder at the police officer near the front door.
“I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Do you know people are getting ready for the holidays? Little lights around their windows, wreaths stuck up on their doors. It looks real nice. Real normal.”
Warren coughed, touched his glasses.
“I know you’re a liar, Botts. I know you told me a bunch of bullshit, and I smiled the whole time. You painted a pretty picture of yourself. A real pretty picture. Friendly teacher. Trying to do your best. Upstanding member of our little town here.”
“I try to,” he said. He began to sweat, and when he shifted, he could smell his wet skin. Something made of iron. Rusting.
“You know what? I know you got crazy shit going on up there inside your skinny head. I tried to dig it out, and even though I’ve been told to stop, I’m not done.” She turned to her partner. “Are we done?”
“No, not done.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“So they say.”
“Who? Who said?”
“You got questions, too, hey?”
“I do,” he admitted.
Detective Reed pushed her hands into her pockets.
“Preliminary report is in, Botts. Some hotshot forensic physicist who’s obviously a blowhard. Can you even believe there’s such a job? An idiot, though. Lots of technical bullshit about height of the branch and shape of the bruising around Amanda Fuller’s neck, and how the rope was evidently tied around the tree first. The neck was broken, which is rare, apparently. We don’t got much experience with that sort of thing.”
“Oh.”
“Means a lot of force was involved. Means she dropped from at least six feet.”
“Yes.” He considered the downward pull of gravity. The upward force from the rope. The vertebrae in her slender neck. It made sense.
“Report says she jumped.” Detective Reed cracked her gum.
“Oh.” He closed his eyes. Stephen had stopped slapping his tail, the counting interrupted.
“That’s what the picture tells us. But it leaves me wondering. Who rammed a science test into her mouth? What type of dumbass would forget about that little detail? Did she eat that herself? Shove it down her throat before she climbed the tree and leapt off? Did she?”
Warren opened his mouth to speak, but nothing emerged.
“And did she just make all those drawings herself? Stash them in your house? Smells like bullshit to me.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he managed.
“Well, you know what I say?” She looked him in the eyes. Warren had to look away, but he still heard her words. “I say, like fuck, Botts. Like. Fuck.”
Light poured out of the window, and Warren stood in Nora’s driveway, watching her through the glass. She was seated on a wine-coloured couch, a small television set balanced on the coffee table in front of her. Leaning forward, she was twisting a knob, then raised a fist, smacked the side of the set. Libby was there, did something on the back of the television, and Nora clapped her hands, settled back, folded her arms across her chest.
Warren hesitated, then walked up the peeling wooden steps. Flecks of snow were falling, and he pressed the doorbell. He had nowhere else to go, and he knew Nora would be happy to see him, to hear what he had to say.
“What!” she said when she yanked open the door. Then, seeing Warren, her tone softened, “Oh. I wasn’t expecting you.” She touched her hair.
“I should have called. But I was just. Wandering.”
“No. No. I’m delighted to see you. Of course I am. Come in. Come in from the cold.” She moved out of the way, and he stepped into the porch. “I’ll make you a tea. Or coffee. Do you want a cream soda? I might have that.”
Though they had been spending time together for months, Warren realized he had not been to her house. He had never asked, and she had never offered. Often she would mention she was painting a room, shampooing a rug, or clearing out closets. His home was so much more con
venient, she repeated. A quick detour on her drive from the store.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Well.” She patted her hair again. “It’s a work in progress.”
“Like most things in life, I suppose.” He inhaled. Could not detect paint, or cleaner, and no closets were open, contents spilling out. But he understood. Her home was full of private happy memories, her husband, her life with Libby, and perhaps she was not ready to incorporate Warren into them.
Every overhead light and lamp was on and, coming in from the darkness, his eyes narrowed, began to water. The room smelled like cardboard. But it was full of her things. And Libby’s. Their coats on hooks, Nora’s purse on the floor, a book Libby had mentioned dropped beside it.
“Hey, Mr. Botts.”
“Hey, Libby. Everything okay?”
“Getting better every day.”
She disappeared upstairs, and Warren followed Nora into the kitchen. It was larger than he had expected, but only had a bar-sized table, two stools. The sink was full of dishes, red sauce smeared on white plates. Warren resisted counting them.
Her face flushed when she glanced at Warren. “Sorry for the mess,” she said. “I just got home from work. Libby made dinner. I asked her to clean up, but something happens to their listening abilities once they hit thirteen.”
“I can hear you!” An eagle screech from upstairs.
Then Nora whispered, “It becomes very selective.”
Warren smiled, nodded.
“Your face is healing. Getting better. Swelling’s gone down.” She touched his shoulder. “Honestly. I don’t know why you didn’t file a report. What kind of people would do such a thing? Sometimes I think the whole community is crawling with animals.” Moving around her kitchen, she opened and closed cupboards, yanked open the fridge door, then closed it. “It’ll have to be water, War, darling. Seems the girl drank all the cream soda.”
Another screech. “I can still hear you!”
“Um. Are you sure I’m not interrupting?”
“No, no. Don’t be silly.”
“Water is nice.” He sat on a stool, his legs lifted, heels of his shoes hooked into the metal bar. “I. Well. I have some news.”
The Substitute Page 27
