She wipes her brow again, then lifts the suitcase from the ground like it’s alive. “Wait here.” She walks to the patrol car and pushes the suitcase across the seat before she climbs in. I can’t see what she’s doing, although I’ve turned around and I’m trying to see.
Within minutes she comes back and drops the suitcase next to me; it’s taped again, but the tape looks curdled, and the strip’s end, where she broke her nail, curls up and sticks to itself. I think of our house after the officers came and went: I think of their undoing, and their futile attempts to replace and restore.
“You’ve enough in there to last you a long while,” she says. She walks around to the driver’s side and collects her hat from the roof of my car. She puts the hat back on and begins to walk away, but then she stops, turns around. “I’m sorry about your mother. I thought you killed her when I was at your house. I thought you were some psycho, especially when I saw that paint on your ma’s stomach, and that rock. But for some reason I sure as hell can’t figure out, I felt sorry for you. And then I read the path report. It said cancer.” She pauses. “Did you kill her, Ass-log? Did you kill her for that money?”
“I told you, you can have the money. You can have all of it. I wouldn’t kill my mother for money.”
“You wouldn’t,” she says. “I believe that. That’s why I’m letting you go today. But I want you to go home, hide that suitcase wherever it was hidden before, and wait for that social worker to come.”
“Okay,” I lie, but it’s not as easy this time.
“Let her help you, that social worker. She’ll help you find relatives if that’s what you want. Don’t tell her about seeing me, though. Don’t tell anyone about seeing me, or about that money. It’ll complicate things. Just keep the money hidden. Take out only what you need. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“I have a daughter about your age,” she says then. She looks away, behind our cars, and her broken nail outlines her badge. “She’s sick. Got cancer, like your ma had.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Her doctors say she’ll die.”
I feel I should say something, but I don’t know what to say. And now I want to tell her I was lying to her. I want to tell her the truth.
“There’s this treatment. It’s experimental. And damn expensive. But what choice do I have? Shit,” she says then, but not to me. She pulls a pink handkerchief from her pocket, holds it to her nose and trumpets. Then she walks back to the patrol car, gets in. I hear her engine bellow, hear her wheels roll, feel my lungs draw in air, realize I’d barely been breathing—that my head feels light. Her car stops when it’s parallel with mine. She rolls down the passenger-side window. I see her eyes are smudges, her cheeks zebra-striped. “Did you see me today, Ass-log?”
“No,” I say.
“Good girl.”
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Ms. Hellig, you claim your mother used jimsonweed fairly regularly, isn’t that right?
—During the months just prior to her death she did, yes.
—And you claim she smoked dried jimsonweed, right?
—Yes.
—Or she would inhale from a mixture made from dried jimsonweed and some chemical compound that would ignite easily, correct?
—Yes.
—Ms. Hellig, you claim you and your mother went out foraging in the woods for wildflowers the day before you discovered her dead, isn’t that right?
—Yes.
—And you claim your primary reason for foraging that day was your mother’s desire to find jimsonweed, right?
—Objection. Calls for speculation.
—Objection overruled, but answer only what you know.
—Mother wanted jimsonweed. There was none left at the house.
—None at all?
—None.
—In fact, you claim there had not been any jimsonweed in the house for approximately one week before your mother and you went out looking for it the day before her death, is that right?
—That’s right.
—So your mother hadn’t used jimsonweed during that week before her death, correct?
—Objection. Speculation.
—Overruled. But, again, answer only what you know.
—She couldn’t have used any. We didn’t have any. Until we went out foraging—
—Okay. So the day before your mother died, when she was supposedly in so much pain, she managed to go walking in the woods looking for jimsonweed?
—Objection. Argumentative.
—Sustained.
—Ms. Hellig, you claim you found your mother dead approximately twelve hours after the two of you returned from gathering the jimsonweed, right?
—About twelve hours, yes.
—Ms. Hellig, in order for your mother to smoke or otherwise inhale jimsonweed, it would first have to be dried, correct?
—Yes.
—It takes jimsonweed more than a day to dry out, doesn’t it?
—Objection. Relevance. Speculation.
—Overruled.
—Yes.
—But, Ms. Hellig, your mother could not have used the jimsonweed you claim you picked for her the day before her death, could she, because the jimsonweed would not yet have been dried?
—I-I hadn’t realized that. It doesn’t make sense.
—No, it doesn’t, Ms. Hellig. It doesn’t make any sense at all.
—Objection. Move to strike. Argumentative.
—Sustained.
—Ms. Hellig, you washed your mother’s body after she died, didn’t you?
—Yes.
—But you don’t have an explanation as to why you did that, do you?
—It just seemed right—
—And you painted the inverted pentagram on her body with bloodroot sap after she was dead, didn’t you?
—I was painting the seal of Solomon—
—Solomon’s seal is a hexagram, Ms. Hellig. The Star of David. What you painted was an inverted pentagram.
—Objection. Narrative. Argumentative.
—Sustained. Move on, Counsel.
EVE’S CUPS
2003
As I drive through Bethan, through its one-way streets, I have an idea where I want to go, but the streets seem to choose my path for me. Again and again I pass the same squarish homes, white painted wood with black shutters or brick with black shutters, with double chimneys like insect antennae. And the Bran College campus, adorning the spread of green grass in its regal brown-red. I see all of this, yet I don’t; it seems merged in my fear, as if my fear is the frail gravity that holds it all in place.
I find myself driving down Irnan Street for the third time, and I feel like an insect slipping into eve’s cups, that carnivorous pitcher plant that lures insects with its beauty, then traps them, devours them. I stop myself: I’m being histrionic, I think; Mother hated when I acted like this. I’m not going to be devoured; I’m just driving. This town’s not alive. The streets are not alive.
I pull to the side of the road, turn off the engine, roll up the window, look out. Mother didn’t bring me to this part of Bethan, except when she taught me to drive, and that was night: everything looked so different. It’s ninety degrees in the afternoon, extraordinary for Maine. There are so many people, standing in conversation, huddled on the grass, moving along sidewalks in clusters of undulating color. Phones nest in hands and dangle from hips. Earphones plug ears, and heads bob. It’s like looking out into a field of the strangest flowers—flowers without roots that can change shape, change location, make sound. Many of the women are barely clothed, wearing short pants that expose their upper thighs and shirts without sleeves. Some of the men have no shirts at all. And there are children with soft bellies and plump arms, sitting atop shoulders. Skin upon skin next to skin.
“Hey there.”
I turn to see a man standing outside the driver’s-side door. I think he’s a man—he’s big enough to be. He leans down, rests hi
s forearms on the car, nearly presses his nose against the window. His hair is the color of ash, after the hot coals fade. He wears a necklace with what looks like a shark tooth; the tooth dangles beneath his Adam’s apple, dips into the hair on his arm. “You lost?” he says.
I hadn’t heard him approach, and for a second I can’t take in he’s talking to me. I realize I felt invisible here, like I’m such an outsider, I couldn’t be seen. I struggle to roll down the window; I feel sweat beading along my upper lip.
“You lost?” he says again. “You sure look lost. And you must be damn hot in that dress.”
I wipe the sweat from my lip, try to push the sleeves of the dress up, but my skin’s sticky. “I’m trying to find this building I saw a few months ago.” I realize I have little to say; I know almost nothing about the place. “It’s around here, I’m just not sure where.” I’ve never spoken to a man before. Or a boy. Except those officers and the sheriff. Except Grumset. But I’d wanted to. I’d seen a teenage boy in Bethan with auburn hair and cider eyes, and cheekbones sharp and high, and deep underlying vales. And I’d imagined his voice, his laugh. And I’d imagined my fingers over his cheekbones, into the vales: the feel of his textured skin. And the scent of that skin, like the ocean.
“You have an address?” the boy-man says now, and he stands upright. He smells like spice and dirt; the smell’s strong. His T-shirt looks several sizes too small: it squeezes his upper arms and rides up his stomach. His pants hang low, and a phone hangs from them; the tips of his hipbones spike above the pants’ waist. And a small spurt of yellowish brown hair forms a line to his belly button, as if he’d tucked a furry anther of sweet vernal grass behind the pants’ snap.
Sweat beads sprout above my upper lip again, and on my forehead; I imagine the red shine on my cheeks, like I’d seen on Mother’s so many times: that translucent, bright red of the redberry elder, a fruit so loved by birds, so distasteful to humans. “No,” I say, “I don’t.” I avert my eyes from the path up his middle. “I saw it in the dark.” I look up, into his face, and I see he’s pulled his mouth to one side, like he’s trying not to smile, or forcing a smile.
He leans back down, peers into the back of the car and at the suitcase. “You looking for somewhere to hang?” he says.
“To what?”
“You running away?”
“No,” I say, but the officer thought I was running away, and this boy-man does, too: I feel transparent. Yet I wasn’t meaning to run away; I was meaning to find my father. “I’m just trying to find some people. I don’t know them, but I think they may be important to me.”
He nods, like what I said made sense. “You have a vision or something?” he says. “This some kind of New Age thing?”
“New what?”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” he says.
I shake my head. And then I stop. “Actually, I am.” But it doesn’t feel like I am. I think of the passionflower Mother saw those weeks ago, and of the hairstreak. Neither belonged here and yet they were here. Did they feel out of place? I wonder. Did they realize this wasn’t their home? Or did they feel more at home because they’d chosen their habitat, not accepted their fate?
“You don’t talk like you’re from around here,” he says. “You a student?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. I hadn’t seen you before, and I’ve been a student here for what seems like my whole goddamned life.” He laughs, but I’m not sure why he’s laughing, and I don’t laugh. He stops laughing. “You don’t act like a student either,” he says. “And you sure as hell don’t look like a student—let’s just say that attire ain’t exactly local fashion.”
Why am I talking to this person? I think. Why am I telling him about myself? Mother would ridicule me, call me an idiot, him an imbecile.
“I have to get going,” I say. I don’t feel invisible anymore, but I wish I did. I start to roll up the window, but he grabs my arm.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I’m not into all this conformity shit. To each his own, I say. That’s my goddamned motto anyway.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“I could help you for a little cash,” he says. “Help you find what you’re looking for.” I wiggle my arm, but he holds fast. “I know this area like the back of my frickin’ hand.” The back of his hand is just inches from my face, and I think about sinking my teeth into it. “My parents are a bit stingy when it comes to entertainment money, if you know what I mean. So I’m happy to help for a little com-pen-sa-tion.”
I remember Mother’s warning about people: “Human beings are like poison ivy,” she’d said. “They vary in form. Upright at times, climbing at times, trailing at times. And sometimes appealing, attractive. Colorful. But come in contact with them and chances are you’ll blister.”
“I appreciate it,” I say. “Your offer. But my dad knows his way around.” I look over into the field, between buildings. “That’s him, there.”
He releases my arm, pivots: no one’s there.
I turn the key and gun the car forward. I jerk the wheel and barely avoid smashing into a parked car.
The boy-man pounds on my car’s rear as I pull away. “I’ll see you around,” he calls.
I want to turn back, go home; I want Mother to be alive again; I want to climb back into our cocoon. My hands drip with sweat, splotch the lap of my dress. I need to be smarter, I think. More careful.
I drive again; I course through the tangle of streets. I’m on Irnan Street a fourth time when I see what looks like the road I want—the road where the building is—but I’m driving the wrong way; I can’t reach it. I pull to the side again, try to back into a parking space, thinking I’ll walk, but the horns of the cars behind are shrieking like birds, like the blue jays of Hartswell. I give up, just as the car in the space ahead pulls away, just before I realize I can drive straight in.
I do, then turn off the engine, but I don’t move from the car. From within this chrysalis, the universe outside is the aberration; if I exit, the aberration will be me. But after two or three minutes, the heat is intolerable.
I climb out. The pale green of my dress is spotted beneath my arms and breasts, and I feel it clinging to my buttocks and upper thighs. I’m not accustomed to what the past year has done to my body: the softer, more fleshy feel of my arms and legs, and the subtle mounds of breasts, of rounded bottom. The breasts, the bottom, look ridiculous on me, I think. Unnatural. Hanging from my scrawny frame like gaudy jewelry.
My hands tremble as I separate the dress from my skin, as I try again to push the sleeves high up my arms. I reach to pull the suitcase from the car. I’ll have to carry it; I have no key for the car’s lock. I’m surprised, for a moment, at how much lighter the suitcase is. Then I’m not surprised: I told the officer she could take the money; at least she didn’t take it all.
There’s a library near where I’ve parked that seems too great for the small space allotted it, as if it’s a growth—a mutation—of the earth itself, especially given its color. It’s cow’s-eye brown, like fertile soil—soil that has sprouted, mutated, become elegant. I focus on the structure, as if I’d come there to study it, as if it is my purpose for being there. As if it’s the reason I ignore—try to ignore—the people passing by me and the sounds all around me. I need time to adjust to this new world, accept my presence here, stop shaking. But the people and sounds are like pungent odors; no matter my effort to seal them out, they slip in, as if I need them. The tapping, thumping, clanking of shoes against pavement: this orchestra of soles. And the voices that mingle like songs of riotous birds, converging pitch with pitch, rhythm with rhythm, pitch with rhythm. And the unfamiliar but somehow familiar clamor of engine after engine, the subtle but distinctive variations of the same grating purr. The occasional horn. A car alarm. And the abrupt emptiness when a car finds parking, when the grating purr ceases.
And the music. It comes suddenly, first the guitar strumming, then the
song. The voice is that of a man, yet it sounds frail to me, diluted, as if at one time there had been more to it, but it’s degenerated like Mother’s scant hair or her emaciated body. Its emergence makes me feel more confident, although I can’t say why. It enables me to turn back toward Irnan Street, toward the sound of the song.
It’s at that moment that I see her.
She’s standing near the corner of Brollachan and Irnan streets, dressed in the same kind of formless dress she always wore, except the dress is not black, it’s brilliantly white, and her hair is tied and wrapped. She looks different dressed in white. Her skin seems to meld into the gown, rendering her less substantial somehow, even thinner. Yet I know it is Mother, the ghost of her. Without thinking, I rush toward her lugging the suitcase. She turns and walks down Brollachan Street, like she’s a real person. I can’t see around the building there, a building called Cyhreath House. I reach the corner, round it, stumble over the guitar case of the man I’d heard singing.
Mother is nowhere.
I stand near the street performer thinking of Mother: she’s haunting me. I’m not all that surprised by this. In many ways I suppose I’d been expecting it—waiting for her spirit to reveal itself to me. It was almost unfathomable to me she would leave me entirely.
The street performer glances up at me, seemingly curious as to why I’ve stopped; no one else has. I walk away, then. Down Brollachan to Cleona Street to Fianat Street.
There’s no trace of Mother.
I continue walking carrying the case, following a robin flitting. The building I’m looking for is somewhere nearby—I’m sure of this. Without intending to, I arrive back at the corner of Irnan and Brollachan, and I look toward my car, to where my car should be, and I see it is gone. Vanished, as if to demonstrate how unreal my world has become.
I’m stunned—for a moment I feel unbearably confused—but then I let it go. I just let it slip away, and I’m relieved in a way. Another remnant of the past eradicated from my life.
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