The girl moved first. She stepped in, shoulder first, as if in the opening moves of a dance, and the bat swooped, and somehow they got the towel curled around it, and the next thing Tom knew, the bat and the towel were sailing out the open window, toward the porch roof below. They watched the thing land, shake itself, moving the towel around like a miniature ghost, then break free of it altogether and flutter away.
“Imagine if it flew right at Mom and Aunt Lou,” Sierra said, laughing. She sometimes covered her mouth when she laughed.
“That would go over well,” agreed Tom.
He realized he had not thought of Claudia at all in the last few minutes. She would have loved the bat. I will accept no severing of our love, he thought, remembering some poem or other. His hands clenched into fists. He refused to forget. Not Claudia. He would keep her with him to the furthest ends of time.
Sierra stood by the open window, looking down. “I’m going to have to wash that towel,” she said.
“We’d best find the crack where it came in, and seal it,” said Tom.
“Good job,” they said together, at the same time.
You felt like you’d won an award when you made her grin, he realized.
If Sierra had any mates at all, he never laid eyes on them, and she never mentioned any. She seldom talked about school. No one ever accompanied her. She was always alone. She never referred to her illness, either, not after that first ride from the airport, though often he could hear the faint sound of her monitor, and she always smelled to him like plastic tubing and Bactine.
Sierra, he suspected, was not what folks called “book smart.” She didn’t hide her disdain for school. “Borrring,” she said. She was clever enough in other ways, however. Michelle needn’t fret so much. Sierra possessed the mind of a natural-born engineer, a person who could do practical things. She’d sorted the house things into sensible piles, and indefatigably moved chairs and tables around from place to place, not just in the attic room, but in the rest of the house as well. Her company was restful as a cat compared to the others. She kept to her quiet corners, he kept to his.
She reminded Tom of a cautious one-eyed calico stray that Claudia had scooped up from the hands of death. The girl and the cat had both been ill, come to think of it, though the cat died when it was still barely more than a kitten. Some things could not be rescued, Tom reminded himself.
Tom had exchanged his return ticket home for an open-ended return, hoping that one more week would mark the end of it. He’d had no time for roaming the fields, no time for tracking, though the deep green New England woods extended in all directions around Ararat Street. He’d heard there were moose and bears about, but he never caught sight of them. Not even a deer or a rabbit. He’d never lived so much indoors. Sometimes it felt as if he had moved into a cage.
He stepped from concrete to tarmac to wall-to-wall carpet, his feet barely touching grass. At home, in Cornwall, at the southern margin of the land he walked barefoot along the strand at least five kilometers a day. Yet he was not unhappy here—or rather, he was not entirely, soddenly miserable, and that in itself was a welcome change.
He postponed his few current clients, pushing them back a few weeks. No one would notice the difference, or care. The work he did left no visible trace in the universe. In the end, his clients did what they wanted to do, regardless of his faithful research. He’d once unearthed a really underhanded, dodgy scheme at a line of dry cleaners, stretching from Pembury to Bath, giving new meaning to the phrase money laundering. But in the end his client bought the chain of stores anyway. Made a fortune at them, too.
Tom’s life had long ago narrowed to two joys, twin comforts: Claudia, and the natural world—his beloved’s eyes, and the scattershot of bronze watery reflection circling out toward Saint Just. What more did any human being want or need? But there was Sierra, cooing softly over toothpick holders and bone-china soap dishes. She appeared content. It seemed too peaceful to last, and of course it was.
A day later, the girl slammed into the little house, rattling the glass in the front door. Now he’d have to repair that, too. It was just past noon. That was the first sign of something off the mark. Sierra always came close to four, after her high school let out. Reliable as rain. She crashed around downstairs, cursing. He’d never heard her use foul language before either. Tom made just enough sound that she’d know he was upstairs. With the mood she was in, he didn’t want to startle her. After a decent interval he came down to the kitchen and found the girl’s eyes red rimmed from crying.
It wasn’t in his nature to ask a stranger what was wrong, pry into someone else’s personal life. “Cuppa?” he said.
She swung around like an angry animal, eyes blazing. “What?”
“Cup, of, tea?” he said, as slowly as possible.
“Why don’t you just talk normal English?” she said.
He shrugged, and smiled wryly.
She said, half-grudgingly, “I guess we’re the ones speaking another language.”
“Cream or plain?”
She made a face. “Plain I guess. Nobody my age drinks tea.” But she pulled up a wobbly wooden chair to the table, and ran her fingers through her dark hair, tugging at the ends. She glowered down at the kitchen tabletop. “Dumb fudging jerks.”
“Because they don’t drink tea?”
“The jerks who run my fudging school,” she seethed. “They think I’m stupid. I’m not stupid. I hate them all.” She didn’t add anything else, and he didn’t ask.
Better not to get mixed up in it. She was scrumped up like a toad on a hot shovel. Even sitting there, she was irritably twitching about. One knee kept jiggling up and down. Her toes hammered against the kitchen floor. The day was hot and humid. Tom plumped the kettle, lit the hob, opened the fridge, which held no more than an apple, an orange, a pint of milk, and a container of yogurt. He felt a sudden overwhelming homesick longing for a kebab shop and the smell of the English tide.
“I could run out for something,” he said. He didn’t know what the girl was or wasn’t allowed to eat. He knew there were strict food rules.
“I already ate,” she said.
He suspected she was lying. It seemed to him perhaps the girl had lost quite a bit of weight recently. She wasn’t all that big to begin with. Her trousers sagged, and she tugged her long T-shirts down almost to her knees. He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign, either—something else to research.
He poured the tea and she did nothing but stir it in circles. She didn’t take out the tea bag, but let the beverage turn amber brown, and then nearly coffee colored. Neither of them spoke. Finally the girl said shakily, “I need to call my mom.”
He nodded, relieved. “Sounds like,” he said, hoping to sound like a responsible adult.
She slumped into the next room, and Tom could hear the tearful murmuring of her voice talking into the phone. Then her volume rose and he caught a phrase or two. “I did tell them!” she shouted and then, louder, “I can handle it myself!”
Within minutes Michelle was charging into the house, calling out her daughter’s name. Sierra had gone back to her endless sorting upstairs, dragging things around. It must have calmed her in some way. After a while he’d heard her humming under her breath, and the tinny sound of some popular song escaping through headphones. Michelle came charging into the kitchen, wild eyed. “Did you hear what happened?” she asked him.
“Trouble?” he said. He hoped she wouldn’t tell him.
“They’re making Sierra change schools,” she said. “The bastards.” Something thumped upstairs, then scraped. “How long has she been here?” Michelle asked.
He never wore a watch. At home, he never needed one. “Dunno. An hour,” he guessed.
“It’s all about protecting their goddamn state test scores,” Michelle fumed. All her golden sunniness had darkened. “No wonder she hates it there. They called her into guidance, Sierra along with two others, and gave them their marching orders. Kicked th
e kids out. Trying to move them to a dumb-ass special academy, pardon my French.”
“Hm.” Academy. He pictured a place full of ancient statuary and trees. Didn’t sound too terrible to him.
“It’s a parking lot for the underachievers,” she said, reading his expression. “It’s a dumping ground. Gets them out of the way. Most of the schoolwork is done online, sitting in front of a computer. You might as well drop your kid at the post office and let them sit there all day like an unclaimed package. Honey!” she called suddenly, her tone shifting entirely. “Can you please come down here so I can see your pretty face?”
“No!” Sierra roared back.
“Have you eaten?” Michelle called.
“Yes!” answered the roar.
Michelle shook her head. She chewed nervously at the side of her finger. “I don’t know,” she said, flexing and straightening her hands. She tossed her head so her golden hair flew in front of her face. “I hate this. I guess maybe she’ll adjust to a new place,” she said. “I don’t know. I’m a teacher, so I should know, but it’s different when it’s your own child. You feel so helpless.”
He sipped his tea, keeping his eyes fixed on the rim of the cup. He understood about helpless, even if he knew nothing about raising children.
“I guess it’ll be okay,” Michelle added. “Maybe it’ll be fine. She hasn’t been thriving where she is. At least she’s not the only student being booted out.”
They sat silent a moment, listening to the scraping and banging sounds from upstairs. “She’ll hate it,” said Michelle. “I know she’ll hate it. But even so—”
The tea was bitter, and growing cool. “Refuse the move,” he said. “If she doesn’t want it.”
Her head jerked up. He held her gaze.
“What?” she said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
“Yeah you do,” he said. “You always have a choice. Ask your husband. He’s a lawyer, innit?”
“Well, yes . . .”
“They’ll be terrified of lawyers. Most wankers are.”
When she smiled, Michelle suddenly looked twenty years younger. Her blue eyes shone at him. She was the pretty one in the family, no question. Then the worry came down again, the way rain settled in the cracks of rills and gorse, sending a whole field into damp chill. “Sierra’s not taking her breakfast bolus,” she said in a worried voice, poking at an invisible something on the tabletop. She glanced up at the ceiling. “I keep checking up on her. I may have to install a monitor alarm soon—and then she’ll think I don’t trust her to regulate her own diabetes meds.”
“You don’t,” he said.
There was that cornflower-blue gaze again, fastening on his. He felt it like little hooks, tethering him to the planet. Two small frown lines above her brows, like the delicate parallel tracks of a vole. “That’s awful. —It’s true. I must be a terrible mother. I don’t even trust my own child,” she said.
“Nor should you,” he added. “You can’t take this stuff lightly. It’s dead serious, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “It’s always dead serious. Tom, you know, you could—”
“I won’t be staying long,” Tom interrupted her. “Don’t get too attached—right? Don’t let her get too attached to me either.” He jerked his head in the direction of the girl upstairs.
Michelle smiled wryly, leaning back in her chair. She folded her arms tightly over her chest. “That’s okay,” she said, with an uncharacteristic bitterness in her voice. “We’re used to losing family members.”
CHAPTER NINE
Louisa had done a good deal of thinking since her mother passed. Died, she corrected herself. Since her mother had died. People in Wormtown, down-and-out knuckleheads; working-class types who drank beer from the can and spat in the street, who poked fun at themselves and laughed you to scorn if you talked about your feelings—those same tough-as-nails hard-asses called it “passing” when someone died. Showed up at your house with tears in their eyes and a big box of drugstore candy in hand.
Louisa knew that her sister Michelle kept taking it personally that Alma Johansson had died without telling her girls half of what she knew about her own life. As if Michelle were to blame for her mother’s secrecy. If only she’d somehow been a better daughter, if she’d just been paying more attention, if they’d all spent more time together . . . If Sierra hadn’t been so sick, if Michelle didn’t let Joe take care of everything. Oh, Louisa could read her kid sister like a book. She’d always been one for taking on the burdens of the world.
But Michelle couldn’t have changed her mother’s basic nature. The child of a suicide no one ever talked about—it was a miracle Alma had been as happy and well adjusted as she was. Louisa knew something about hanging on to secrets. She had been keeping them all her life, for herself and for other people, too. And what did it lead to in the end? An attic space loaded full of rubbish, crammed in behind a locked door. Well, Louisa wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen to her. She would give things in her own life until the end of the week, and then something had to give. When she thought of it, as sudden as that, it made her suck in her breath. You went along and played along. Still, there was a limit to everything, and in the wake of her mother’s death and resurrection as a stranger Louisa had never fully known—in the wake of all that, Louisa gave herself a deadline. She had to keep it short, or she’d chicken out. Seven more days. To figure things out, get her own life in order. One week, seven days. The very idea made her breathless. She counted them off, one by one, as scared as she had ever been in her life.
Those seven days of waiting felt to Louisa like seven months. Or else like seven minutes. They went too slow, then they went too fast. Sometimes she almost gave up, gave back in. Why not? Maybe she could just let well enough alone. Her heart pounded like a wild bird at the cage of her ribs. She could feel herself shrinking backward in the middle of her workday, resisting a change even as part of her was moving inexorably forward.
She became diligent and extra careful at work and at home, as if her own forced goodness could forestall the inevitable. She cooked enough on Sunday night to feed them all week; she never once complained; she didn’t pick any fights with Art; she kept the house clean. She bit her tongue and kept her smart-ass nasty remarks to herself. She even considered praying but that seemed a bit much. Hey God, remember me? Sorry about that thirty-year break I’ve been on. She took every needy client that called for an appointment, staying on extra late at the office till seven, eight at night, which made snooty Brandi, the WAUSA manager, raise her sculpted blonde eyebrows in surprise.
Louisa could practically feel Brandi thinking. Why is that Louisa Wandowski being so cooperative all of a sudden? She must need the overtime money pretty bad. I’ll bet she screwed up royally somewhere. She must be in big trouble to be suddenly acting so nice.
I’m just avoiding going home, Louisa could have told her. I bet we’ve all done that sometime. But there was no talking to someone like Brandi. You might as well march yourself up to a store mannequin and give it a go. Lips outlined in mulberry, peach blush creating high round cheekbones above her real cheekbones, Brandi looked like she should have been working behind an Estée Lauder counter in some fancy Boston department store. She acted like she’d been born with a silver spoon glued to the roof of her mouth, but Louisa knew she’d grown up on the most desperate, dangerous part of Dorchester Street. That i at the end of her name was another dead giveaway. White trash always named their kids things like Bambi and Toni. Seemed like everyone Louisa knew was hiding some secret or other.
Louisa went into Art’s little study while he was away at work, and opened his desk drawer, and rummaged around for a few minutes, found what she was looking for and then closed it again. He never bothered to lock anything because Art knew Louisa was not the kind of wife who pried.
On Monday she worked late. She went to Trivia with the gang on Wednesday night and they came in second because none of them could identify tha
t year’s Academy Award winners. No one had time to go to the movies anymore. Louisa was the history buff, so she was usually good for history and geography questions. But her mind wasn’t on it; and when the MC asked a question about the Sun King, her mind drew a big fat blank.
Thursday night she and Jean-Marie went shopping together because Jean-Marie’s eldest girl was getting married that summer, and Jean-Marie needed a nice mother-of-the-bride dress. The color scheme was maroon and gold; everyone in the bridal party was going to look like they were part of a marching band. Jean-Marie and Louisa drove an hour away to the big fancy Natick Mall, which was like visiting another country, filled with only rich and young people. After they found the gold-colored dress Jean-Marie had been looking for, they went and had cocktails in one of the mall chain restaurants, giggling like teenagers. Louisa and Jean-Marie had been friends since high school. They’d both lost people in that big fire up on Indigo Hill. Maybe their only true loves. It had happened so early. They never talked about it anymore, they hadn’t either of them talked about it in decades, but both of them thought about it plenty.
Before she went out, Louisa cleaned her whole house from top to bottom Thursday after work, mopping and then scrubbing down on her knees, and Friday she got the car washed on her way home from work, picked up some fried chicken, but by the time she came home that night, Art was already out for the count, sprawled on his back in the spare-room bed, snoring lightly, with the door closed. He said he knew his snoring kept her awake. Not that she’d ever really cared or complained.
On Saturday morning, (Only one more day left, she told herself, just one) Louisa ate at Lou Roc’s Diner with the Gang of Six. There were seven that day, including Paco’s wife Kim, and an old high school friend named Scotch, who’d been away in rehab, and who sat at breakfast gulping down black coffee like it was going out of style. Art didn’t come. He had too many pressing things to do around the house, he told her, and Louisa was way past arguing with him. She was running out of time now for real. The week had flown by. It was like it had never happened.
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