Ruth sputtered a laugh. Oh, right. But one of the others, a more experienced mother, said, How nice!
But I can’t find my seashells. For dusting.
The two women sitting on the tweed sofa smiled. And Ruth caught her cue. Try the bookshelf over your desk? I’ll bet that’s where they are.
Thank you, said Courtney and went out through the garage to find Paige in the orchard. Paige had told Courtney she was strictly forbidden in the orchard, even in the mornings. No one wanted her in the orchard now. But Paige had taken her best things to give away. Just like she’d taken their father’s canon-style cigarette lighter and his English beer.
In the orchard, Paige stood against the outhouse, arms crossed and angry, as Courtney walked toward her along the path. Two boys, Eddie, with the bluish swollen girl’s mouth, and Henry, with the pink cheeks, sat on the ground smoking small black cigars. They looked up at Courtney, frowning. The third boy was Andrew Kennedy, leaning back against his tipped-over bike wheel, legs splayed. He didn’t look at her at all.
Out, said Paige. Now.
We are out, said Courtney jutting her chin. She stared at her sister’s tiny breasts on display, her uniform jumper on the ground. Her Carter’s underpants looked stretched out and baggy as if she’d carried things in them. The lighter, the shells. She still wore her school blouse, opened up, but the collar was smudged as if Henry’s black cigar and Eddie’s blue lips had leaked together there. Her tiny breasts, unlike Courtney’s, poked straight out like thumb tips. And the nipples were light small orangey caps on each. Courtney’s new breasts were rounder. Ruth junior, Paige had said in a fight, and Courtney worried this might be true. Her nipples looked like stupid pink toy pig pennies. Go away, said Paige. Last warning.
Ruth wants you, Courtney said.
What for?
How should I know? She told me to find you. She said even if you had to stay for detention, tell Sister to let you come home.
Henry stubbed out the black cigar. He stood and popped it through the half-moon slit in the door behind Paige’s head. As if she’d disappeared. He didn’t need to acknowledge her anymore. She’d failed at something, Courtney knew, and felt a tickle of panic for her sister. Henry’s pants were unzipped, but now he fastened them, slid his belt through the loops in slow motion. Buckle, jacket pulled on, his clip-on school tie shoved down into a side pocket. Yeah, he said to the boys. Eddie jerked up his book bag. Andrew Kennedy righted his bike. The three of them zigzagged away through the wrecked trees.
Nice work, Courtney. Paige pulled her uniform jumper on over her head.
Zipper, said Courtney.
Paige smoothed her flyaway hair. They’ll tell everyone, you know.
I’ll take my shells back now, said Courtney.
Tough luck, detective, said Paige. Too late.
The next week, the second week of sixth grade, Courtney’s new teacher, Sister Frances, said they were old enough to know the ins and outs of hell. They weren’t babies anymore. They had power. They could pray for those already in hell and for those who were well on the way, stumbling blindly along the dark path.
Paige. Obviously. She’d let boys rummage around in her underpants.
Sister Frances then prompted the prayer for those who had sinned against us. This was the merciful part, the intervention for our enemies. This was all fascinating and not something their mother had agreed with, ever. She had suspended her belief when she was little, she told them, like a balloon. Like a zeppelin! And she seemed to think this was very funny. So Courtney hovered now between whether to try this prayerful intervention for her sister or not. But then she did. She imagined lifting Paige out of her quick certain slide into hell at the last minute, throwing a damp towel over Paige’s scorched wispy leaf-tangled hair. She prayed and nothing changed. So on Thursday afternoon Courtney tried her mother again. She hid her mother’s play earring, a pearly cluster on a rusty clip, under the bed skirt. She had a candle stub from the kitchen drawer. She nestled the stub in the shag carpet and lit it. The instant the bed skirt caught fire Ruth was banging on the door.
Something about the look of Paige, her legs wide, knee socks high, oxfords laced, backbone lined up at the sagging corner of the old outhouse, hair a nest with dead leaves tangled at the top of her head, underpants hanging in heavy folds, her nipples, her nylon school blouse reminded Courtney of a painting her mother had kept hanging on the wall of her dressing room. Nymphs, water nymphs, bored and dozy-eyed like Paige with bodies that looked electric under the winding fabric mostly on their hips. The nymphs dragged toes through shallow ponds. They sat on rocks or propped their bodies against tree trunks like Paige at the outhouse. Courtney could kill Paige. Just kill her. Paige’s underpants all baggy around her legs just like their mother’s bathing suit because their mother had become too thin.
Even though their father had tried to fatten her up with barbecued steaks on the grill, salt in the air, blood rolling on their plates. Their mother would lick and chew. Hurry now, said Mrs. Hoving standing at the back door. Come girls. The light still pink over the ocean, Mrs. Hoving tucked them into bed. Then their parents would come and find the exact place on each forehead to efficiently deliver their love. Their father had forgotten all about that. No one was delivering anything anymore. But Paige in the orchard with her baggy pants was transmitting something to the boys on the ground and they were the ones with precision now. Courtney hated her sister for deserting her this way. She truly hated her. And that made her feel very sick in her stomach.
Downstairs in the kitchen, waiting for her father to come home and adjudicate the bed fire, her mother’s pearly play earring sitting on a dish like poison, Courtney slumped and still—not a word now, hissed Ruth, not a sound—two things occurred to Courtney. The first thing was that Ruth had knocked before charging in, which she seldom did, and the second was that she must have been right outside the door the whole time, waiting for Courtney to do something bad.
Ruth stood now whisking rye bread crumbs into gravy at the stove top. Potatoes roasting in the oven. A soft, soothing pop-pop of gunfire from the den, where Paige, home from school, watched television. When their father came in at dinnertime, Ruth would then wash her hands of Courtney and her obstinate refusal to accept the love and nurturance so abundantly provided. She was finished being treated like the servant, she said, stirring the gravy, rehearsing. This was it.
But their father was in no mood for Courtney. Right away he tried to shoo her into the den with Paige. You stay where you are! said Ruth.
Listen, he needed to talk to Ruth, now, because he wasn’t going to let the bastards win.
Of course he wasn’t, said Ruth, but she squinted when he put his briefcase down on the chair beside Courtney. He might let the bastards win, her look said. He just might.
And it occurred to Courtney that Ruth washing her hands of all of them might be the answer her mother was giving to the prayer. Her mother would never do anything to hurt Paige, Courtney now understood, even if she did have to go to hell. Their mother had protected Paige against the boy ghost and the ocean. Like their mother, they only swam in the pool. And one time she’d found Paige in the dark rock cellar: I see you, darling. Come out now. She’d been missing for so long, their father had given up and feared the worst. Courtney had forgotten about all that.
Don’t move, Ruth said. Don’t move a muscle.
But to her father, Courtney had become invisible. The corrupt thieving assholes on the town council, the bastards at the Beach Club. He turned blood red. Courtney knew how this might unfold. Sometimes their mother had hidden them in the ocean house, hidden herself. But Ruth was too stupid and the house too small for really hiding. Courtney slithered down lower in her chair as a warning, staring at Ruth until finally she got the hint and relented. I’ll call you girls in a bit. Out! Out! Right this instant.
Turn it up, Courtney said in the den. Quick.
You, said Paige. But when the voices got louder in the kitchen, she threw Courtney the remote.
They lay low together on the sofa. On the television, a triple homicide and not a single suspect so far. The detectives were stumped. Courtney couldn’t follow the story.
Of the three boys still left in the orchard, the ones who hadn’t graduated last year, Courtney preferred the youngest, Eddie, with the leaky-blue-pen girlish lips. He was in the other sixth-grade class. On the playground, if she kept very still she could feel him watching her from within the clump of boys who shuffled around under the basketball hoop. The dark head of probably Eddie turned slightly toward her. She could feel it. Like an arrow. A dart.
She asked Paige, casually, through the veil of the loud TV, she was just wondering, if Eddie had ever said much about her.
About who? asked Paige, her head turning sideways, ready, for once, to give a straight answer. Who do you mean?
Courtney waited a moment. Paige was teasing her. Then she realized, no, she wasn’t. She hadn’t heard her. Well, I mean, does he mention Fiona Murphy? asked Courtney.
Not a prayer, snorted Paige. Good one.
In a little while, Ruth appeared in the door then closed it behind her. Turn that down, will you?
Courtney pushed the mute.
Set up the TV trays and I’ll bring in sandwiches. She was talking to them as if they were all at the Beach Club. And they were just another pair of snotty kids waiting for their fries.
The following Monday, Mr. Kemp from the orchard called Ruth on the telephone with terrible, shocking news about Paige. News that Ruth could scarcely believe much less repeat. Now Paige was the one sitting at the kitchen table waiting for justice. And Courtney was curled up on the sofa in the den still in her school uniform, eyes half-closed, watching a western. The long ruffled dresses on the saloon girls, the spark in their attitude, smiling for the deputy, who was a dunce, and longing for the sheriff, who was not. Bang, bang, bang, the crooked guys were run out of town. Most of them near dead. Now Paige was listening to Ruth’s threats, rehearsing what their father would say when he knew what she’d been doing in Mr. Kemp’s good clean orchard. People eat those apples!
Ruth was bug-eyed with excitement. And something in her enthusiasm, the lush happiness of it, made Courtney feel that she’d told on Paige herself. Maybe she had. For so long later she would still feel the mistake in her heart, as if she had carried a mean little boy there, someone who would take aim at Paige and harm her, hope for the worst. Over and over and over until she was dead.
During the commercial, Courtney made a casual trip to the kitchen for some milk. But Paige wouldn’t meet her eye. Outside in the yard, the holly bushes caught the first pink rays before the sunset. The phone rang, and their father’s voice spilled out of the receiver held close to Ruth’s ear.
Right away, Ruth said.
She punched the receiver back on the wall, rummaged in her purse for the car keys, and headed for the garage. Now Paige caught Courtney’s eye. Ruth? called Courtney.
What now? said Ruth. She looked frantic.
Should we come with you? You don’t want Paige out of your sight, remember?
Oh, Christ in heaven!
Should we get in the car?
Come, she said. Come on. Hurry up!
So many important-looking black cars already lined up along Ocean Avenue it looked like a funeral. A whole gang of policemen lounged at the gate of the ocean house between the cypress trees. Ruth knew her rights, she said, but the police did not agree. Besides, who were the little girls? This was no place for children. Someone might get hurt. Already the bulldozers were aimed at the turret side of the house.
This is illegal, said Ruth, which made the policemen smile.
Such an enormous house and it took no time to come tumbling down. The rot through and through, said a fireman later, smoking a cigar, stale and sour by the smell of it. He’d taken it upon himself to guard Ruth and the girls from harm. In the end they were allowed to stand just inside the old gate once Ruth had convinced them that the girls were the rightful owners. It was their mother’s house, she said. And there was a sheepish squint of recognition in the fireman as he looked first at Paige then less certainly at Courtney. All right, he said.
Then a fireman with black hair swirling on his forearms came over and explained the methodology to Ruth. Turning his face close to the cypress and out of the wind. Basically I could have knocked it over with my fist, he said. So we didn’t need a lot of fancy machinery. Before the sky was fully dark the house lay tucked inside its foundation.
Ruth had some old red cocktail napkins stuffed into her capri pant pockets. Here, she said to the girls, gesturing to their noses, and she did the same herself. The wind off the ocean had shifted and caught up the debris dust from the house like spray and a contaminated wet breeze now prickled their skin.
Oh, you know what? said Paige. I forgot to tell you, her eyes serious over the mask of the red cocktail napkin. Eddie asked me to give you a message.
Courtney looked at her.
He said to tell you, no offense, but you stink like dog farts.
Courtney looked back to the jetty. Completely visible now where the house had once been. So surprising how small and crumbling it was without the house to protect it.
That was the last of the ocean house, a collapse of rubble in a deep pit, doused by spray coming across the rocks. For good measure the firemen directed their hoses toward any flighty timber. Whatever might be caught up by wind or vandalized was soaked until useless.
Someone said, You’d think they’d want to save those precious windows.
But Ruth shook her head. You start parsing this and that and you’re never done.
Does Ruth hate the house? Courtney asked Paige. It’s not that, Paige said. It’s you. She told Daddy you were the worm in their happy cabbage. She said it’s a shame you’re not more like me.
You? said Courtney. You? People can just rummage around your underpants whenever they feel like it. This was a lame insult and Courtney tried to think of something better.
But there were shouts and the dousing firemen dropped their hoses and scampered back from the pit just as a leap of flame shot up from the center and died right down, a bit of gas trapped in the line flaring, that’s all, but Paige burst out crying. She was suddenly sobbing and couldn’t be calmed. They left then, and Ruth put her to bed with an aspirin and a cool towel for her eyes.
Courtney, you bunk in the den tonight, Ruth said. And all night long the tweed nubs of the couch stung at Courtney’s cheeks like the flying debris.
Paige didn’t recover right away. And the second night of the fever, Courtney went upstairs and found Paige out of the sheets, her nightgown flung up and her legs sprawled. At first Courtney was stunned and then she argued in her mind like a prayer to go forward to help Paige. And her feet obeyed. She touched Paige’s arm, which was hot as a dish from the oven. Does it hurt? she asked, and Paige moaned and said no. I’m just burning up. I caught fire.
No, you didn’t, said Courtney. You couldn’t. We were standing too far away.
I was supposed to, said Paige. And I did.
I think it’s only supposed to happen for a short time, then stop.
On the third night, Ruth said, Fever or not, it’s time to rejoin the living. And when their father came home it was like the girls were watching a beautiful show. It had nothing to do with them. Paige, pale and sulky in her green pajamas, at the dinner table. Their father was telling Ruth the big news from the courthouse. The town council. His lawyers had finally severed the witch’s head.
What head? asked Courtney.
Her father couldn’t hear her. That conniving bitch, he said to Ruth. She thought she’d just go on strangling me from hell.
Who?
Sweetheart? their father said to Ruth. Pausing
like the sheriff, finally about to choose the right saloon girl, the most virtuous. Sweetheart, they dropped the charges.
Ruth put her hands together and closed her eyes.
What charges? asked Courtney.
And.
And?
He’d been offered a variance to build a tower.
Ruth burst out laughing. No!
Yes.
Now won’t those Beach Club pokey-pokes be singing a different tune.
Pokey-pokes? asked their father, delighted. That’s cute.
Each apartment in their father’s new tower had a balcony with hurricane-resistant glass. This was a big point in the design. So the inhabitants, forty families on the ocean side, could sit in the comfort of their living rooms and not be looking at a steel barricade. They were paying for the view after all. The hurricane glass in standard green was nearly an inch thick and cost one hundred dollars a square foot and would weather any storm. How had the crab-claw etchings and the pale-pink glass roses survived all those years?
The ocean house had been built on rocks, on sand, but the tower required an excavation so deep, so reinforced, it would double as a bomb shelter for the families during the Cold War. Each apartment had access to impermeable individual kiosks like concrete cages with slats in the wall for bunk beds. Most of the families kept junk there, stuff they couldn’t fit in the apartment. The oxygen tanks hanging at intervals lost pressure over the years. And despite claims, water seeped in and pooled. When Courtney was fifteen, she led Eddie through the sub-basements as dark and shadowy as the catacombs where the Christian martyrs hid or just waited for death, and she felt the warm silky nub of his bluish penis for the first time there. Her sneakers getting wet. He pushed up hard against her until his heart beat inside the cage of her own chest like love.
Outcast
When Lee-Ann first arrived in Long Branch by bus, she hovered on the raised step looking all around her for a signal from someone, the driver, anyone, to go ahead and make her way over to the quaint green canopy the chamber of commerce erected in the summer months.
The Ocean House Page 3
