“What the hell’s a torpor? Never heard the word.”
“It’s a kind of hibernation,” she had said patiently. “An overnight hibernation.”
Mallie had been the one to spot the hummingbird nest in the young willow next to the garage one morning, as they sat on the porch. It was spring, a cool day, and she was wearing the red jacket she always wore back then because hummingbirds loved red. He watched her eyes narrow, then widen, then she leaned forward and held herself still.
“William T.,” she whispered, and he followed her pointing finger. “A nest.”
He squinted. “That’s a knot,” he said. “A nestlike knot. Your eyesight’s going, Mallo Cup. Poor kid, only nine years old, with failing eyesight.”
“Wrong. It’s a nest, and it’s a hummingbird nest.”
He got up to prove her wrong but she was right. “Well Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “That’s a hell of a camouflage job. Guerrilla fighters, these hummingbirds are, aren’t they?”
She nodded. Did she have any idea what a guerrilla fighter was? Look at her, willing to go along with him, come what may and come whatever he said. If he had ever had a daughter, he would have wanted her to be like Mallie. He and Crystal had told themselves they were like Mallie and Charlie’s uncle and aunt, a second home, a refuge, if need be. That was one reason he had fought Lucia for guardianship.
Three days after the C-section, after one more anonymous message from the kind nurse, William T. and Crystal had gotten back in the truck and headed to the hospital at dawn one more time. They had vowed to witness whatever they could. They were doing it for Mallie. Charlie had stayed home again. He wanted nothing to do with it.
They parked three long blocks away this time — they didn’t want to risk anyone seeing them — and made their way through the woods on the shortcut path between the hospital and the strip mall. It was quiet that early. Faint fluorescence glowed through the propped-open employee door in back of the Thai Garden as they walked past, and the chop-chop-chop of a knife, a machete from the thunk of it, came to their ears.
Crystal walked ahead. She was light of foot and incapable of walking slowly. When they hiked, sometimes she got a switchback or two ahead of him before she noticed.
The scrubby patch of lawn next to the employee lot was quiet when they arrived. All the cars familiar to them from many months of visiting were there: the white Ford, the rusted-out Buick, the gleaming Honda Accord. And the same battered red bicycle was locked to the bike rack. The marchers, if there were any, would be out front with their signs. The news crews too, if there were any. But maybe William T. and Crystal were the only ones, thanks to the kind nurse, who knew that today was the hand-off day.
It happened fast. Like this: the back door opened and a man and a woman, along with Lucia, backed out. Aaron and Melissa Stampernick, family law attorney and social worker, husband and wife. And Lucia. She looked thinner than the last time William T. had seen her, her cheekbones prominent. She cradled a blanketed bundle that could only contain her premature-but-healthy grandson. She walked in a protective, carrying-a-baby way toward a blue sedan, whose lights winked on and then off: one of the Stampernicks must have pressed a remote. Aaron glanced right, left, and then his eyes fastened on them. He drew himself up, ready to speak if he had to. To fight, if he had to. Crystal’s breath was quick and light but she said nothing.
Lucia was standing in front of the car door, which was open. Aaron Stampernick stared at William T. and Crystal, then turned to his wife and Lucia and pulled something out of his pocket. A cell phone. The man held the phone before his eyes and said something to Lucia, who was bending over the baby, and she stood straight and smiled for the camera. An imaginary book of imaginary photos swam up in William T.’s mind, a book full of photos of a baby and a toddler, first day of school, last day of school, birthday parties and Christmas trees bright with ornaments.
Crystal brushed tears away with the back of her hand. He put his hand on her elbow. There was nothing they could do about it. The baby was in the world now, and Lucia would raise him as her own. The days and nights and months would pass and Mallie would be unaware of them. That baby would grow into a boy, and then a man, separate and apart from the woman who had given birth to him, and all the people besides her mother who loved her.
Unless things were different now. Unless, with Mallie back, the rules had changed.
Mallie
Mallie sat cross-legged on a motel bed on the outskirts of Utica. White walls, white bedspread, white pillows. She had loosely organized the contents of William T.’s box into four piles that rose around her on the bed: Mallie, Darkness, Time, Pain. She was Mallie, the rapist was Darkness, Time was a long sky filled with dark birds, all the months she had slept through. And Pain was everywhere, laced throughout the letters to the editor and newspaper articles piled in William T.’s cardboard box, in lines like Everybody knows her face now.
Which was a lie.
The face that everybody thought they knew was the face they had seen online and in newspapers and on the television screen. But there were plenty of other photos of her. There was a photo of Lucia pregnant with her. A photo of her father, Starr, pushing her down the sidewalk in front of Crystal’s Diner. A photo at the end of the driveway, waiting for the school bus, on the first day of school every year. On tricycles. Bikes. Ice skates. In her purple and gold robe at high school graduation. A photo of her and Charlie holding hands in front of a Christmas tree bright with lights.
She pulled out her phone and called her brother. No answer. This was the fourth time she had tried him. She pictured him staring down at the blinking screen of his phone, out there wherever he was in Pennsylvania. Pick up pick up pick up, she willed him. I need to talk to you. But he didn’t.
When Charlie was three years old, she had made up a game called Questions, trying to keep their father’s memory alive in him. What had their father liked to eat, what had he spent his days doing, what was the song he used to sing to them? Questions upon questions, and Charlie would recite the answers. She had been a child herself, nine years old. Back then she used to wonder about spirits, and if the spirit of a person could still be in the world after they were dead. She had wondered about reincarnation: If it was real, could you be reborn as another human being? As an animal? A bird? Was her father’s spirit somewhere in the sky, migrating
above her?
Then the game of Questions morphed into the game of Once Upon a Time. Charlie had been a quiet, reserved little boy. It was hard for him to talk about things that he worried or wondered about. Making up a story together — eight words per sentence because he liked to count on his fingers — became a means to improvise their way through hard times.
She had always been his protector, his confidante, his translator to the world. But now he wouldn’t pick up the phone. Her connection to her brother: one more thing that had disappeared. Charlie was gone and Zach was gone and William T. was so on edge she couldn’t stand being around him. And the baby — the fact of him, his existence in this world — that was something so big, and so bewildering, that she couldn’t get her head around it all. Piles of documents, evidence of all the months she had slept through, rose around her on the bed, boxing her in with all the answers they didn’t contain.
Who: An unknown male. Based on DNA evidence, no known previous criminal record.
Relationship, if any, to the victim: None. None of the men she knew and loved in her life or from her past, none of the MVCC classmates she had sat next to and studied with, bought coffee with, laughed and talked with, would ever hurt her. Unless?
Age: Young. But maybe not?
Occupation: Something. But maybe not?
Family: No. No one who did that would have a family. No one who did that would look a parent or a sister or a brother or a girlfriend or a wife or a child in the eye and be able to keep on living. Unless maybe he would?
Physical description: Strong. Not weak. Because if she could have, she would have fought. She would have fought him for her life.
So Darkness was a mystery. Faceless and placeless. Dark bird hiding in the heart of a man. It made her skin crawl to think about. This motel room made her skin crawl too. It was too white. Too quiet. Too much like St. John’s rehab. Who could she talk to?
Just then her silenced phone flashed bright with an incoming call, like an answer to her quandary, and she snatched it up. william t. jones.
She let it flash until it stopped. She couldn’t talk to him even though he kept calling. William T. was too heavy, too worried. He had been through too much. He was too invested, was the word that came to her. Too close to her. Hurt by proximity. His old flock of lame birds came back into her mind and how he used to shoo away the mean rooster to keep him from pecking at her. How he and Crystal used to scramble eggs for her and Charlie on sunny mornings. How he used to call their names in that giant voice of his from the big green John Deere across the field. All the knock-knock jokes he had kept telling her, years after she’d outgrown them, his big body bent double with laughter.
Was there anyone in the world she could be an ordinary girl with, have an ordinary conversation with? She fished Beanie’s number out of her pocket.
so how’s the stand-up going?
After a minute the screen flashed.
couldn’t be better. knock, knock.
who’s there?
wooden shoe.
wooden shoe who?
wooden shoe like to hear another joke?
She laughed. It sounded strange in the quiet motel room, just her and the phone and the laugh. Wooden Shoe was the oldest knock-knock joke in the world. It was one of William T.’s favorites.
knock, knock. She tapped the letters in one by one.
who’s there?
dewey.
dewey who?
dewey have to go through this every time?
damn fine joke there, m.w. and, yes, we do. it’s called warming up the crowd.
Beanie’s flashing grin, his yellow hat, the white worms of his mop wiggling over the shining floor, were among her strongest memories from St. John’s.
beanie?
yeah?
how am i going to get through this?
Dammit. That was not something that an ordinary girl having an ordinary conversation would say. She looked around the white room again, white walls, white bedspread. She suspended the phone above her head with both hands and waited. Keep working, they had said. Your recovery will be consistent with your determination. She lowered the phone and raised it, lowered it and raised it, waiting for Beanie’s response.
i don’t know, he wrote. absorb it, i guess?
but how?
make up some kind of story, maybe. a story that lets the mess in but lets you out. you know?
just make up a story? like once upon a time?
maybe. why not?
But where to begin? Once upon a time a girl was assaulted. Once upon a time a girl got pregnant. Once upon a time a girl gave birth to a baby who was alive and in the world. Once upon a time the girl’s boyfriend left her. Once upon a time dark birds surrounded the girl. What could she make up to counteract any of it?
She left the piles of papers in the stale motel room and stepped outside into the cool air of late afternoon. Across the street was Beautiful You Wigs, tucked between Trusty Hardware and the China Garden Buffet. Everybody knows her face now. Oh, hell no, they didn’t. She crossed the street and checked out the wigs: A Dolly Parton–like platinum mound of curves and waves. A jet-black pixie. A tousled strawberry-blonde, a snowy cap of white. A swingy blue-green bob. She pushed open the door.
A heavy woman behind the counter, a pencil in her hand, looked up from a dark grid of columns and numbers.
“Help you?”
“How much is that blue-green one in the window?”
The woman laid the pencil down and hauled herself up. She eased the wig up off its faceless Styrofoam head and peered inside.
“Twenty-six ninety-nine. Want to try it on?”
Mallie stood in front of the mirror and pulled her own hair back with the elastic the woman handed her. Shiny, synthetic blue-green hair swished around her jawbone. The cursed bangs were hidden.
“Not trying to drive off business,” the woman said, “but your hair is real pretty just the way it is. Why a wig?”
Because everybody knows my face now. But this woman didn’t seem to recognize her.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said, disregarding the woman’s question. “If you saw me on the street wearing this wig, would you recognize me?”
“Honey, I don’t know you to begin with.”
Which was proof. Right? Mallie handed the wig lady two twenties from Burl’s stash and watched as she folded the wig in half — it was unsettling to watch, as if she were squeezing a human head into something much too small — and put it in a Beautiful You plastic bag. Mallie pushed the door open and emerged onto the cracked pavement.
“Mallie? Oh my God. Mallie.”
A girl stood in front of her there on the sidewalk in front of the wig store. Charlie’s old friend Amanda. Mallie’s legs went shaky and she sat down on the curb. Amanda used to relax her hair but she’d let it go natural, a beautiful highlighted cloud around her oval face. A tiny stud glittered just below her lower lip. She and Charlie had been friends since middle school. The two of them used to share saltine and butter sandwiches at lunch; they loved the way the butter spiraled up through the tiny holes in the saltines. Now Amanda sat down next to Mallie. Her fingers were covered with rings, huge and black and spiked and leather.
“It is you, right?” she said again. Shyness, confusion, recognition flitted across her face. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Amanda had been a shy middle-schooler, and that shyness was still in her despite the rings and the haircut and the gold stud.
“When it happened I cut your picture out of the paper and I taped it up above my desk,” she said. “Not the horrible photo, not that one,” she added quickly. “I mean the good one. The pretty one. And I prayed for you every night. I mean, not pray pray, I’m not a religious freak like all the ones that were fighting over you, but just, you know. Charlie and I texted all the time when it happened. And for months. I mean, we still do.”
The girl was babbling. Her hands worried themselves together in her lap.
“Do you talk to Charlie?” Mallie said.
“Yeah. I mean, we . . .” She looked away, then back. “We hung out a lot. When it happened. Which maybe you didn’t know.”
“Charlie lives in Pennsylvania now. I don’t really know why, though.”
“Well,” the girl said, uncertainty in her voice. “I mean, you talk to him, don’t you?”
Mallie shook her head, but Amanda was talking again.
“I’m just so glad you came back from the dead. I mean not dead, obviously, but from wherever you were. I won’t tell. But it must be crazy, right? To find everything out. Like to find out about the baby, and know he’s out there? Would you ever try to get him back?”
Mallie closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said. “What a stupid thing to say.”
“Charlie doesn’t pick up when I call.”
“I know. I tell him he should. We text all the time. But, guilt. Like if he hadn’t gotten drunk, he wouldn’t have called you, you wouldn’t have driven down and the whole thing would never have happened. The same story he goes over again and again.”
“He has to get through that. Because I’m still here. I’m still me.”
Her voice cracked. Next to her, Amanda was quiet. Mallie kept her eyes closed so she wouldn’t have to see pity on her face. But the girl surprised her. “Charli
e wants to talk to you,” she said. “He wants to get through this. He just doesn’t know how.”
Back at the motel, Mallie gathered up the contents of William T.’s box and put them back into it and closed it up as tightly as she could. Worn-down corners and sagging sides. The box that told the whole story and none of the story. Next to it sat the box of possible futures. It hadn’t seemed right to leave it in the truck, where someone might steal the fortunes that belonged only to her and Zach. It didn’t seem right to have it here in the motel room either. The box of possible futures belonged on its high shelf in the cabin mudroom, ignored until there were more cookies to add to the pile.
She lay back on the motel bed and put her hands on her stomach. If she were not herself but a client, she would place her hands on her shoulders and breathe in deeply and let it out slowly. She would oil her hands and rub them together to spark warmth, then begin. First the heavy egg of the head, cradled in both her hands. Relax the muscles of your neck and let me support your head, was how she usually began. People were not used to letting go. Not used to letting their heads be supported by another’s hands. She would press her fingers hard into the client’s scalp. In the beginning her teacher had told her to press harder than seemed right, that harder was better than light, and the teacher had been right. Mallie had learned to hold a client’s head in her hands, fingers pressing tight, until the first deep exhale came. Sometimes it took a long time, minutes, even, but that was all right. She was patient. She would wait.
From the skull, she would move to the face, fingers pressing and smoothing the forehead. The rim of the eye sockets. The cheekbones. The jawline. By now the client’s eyes were usually closed. The deeper letting-go had begun. This was when the stories could be drawn out of the body, spun slowly into the quiet air of the massage room. It was not a fast process. It took time.
You won’t be able to do it to yourself, the teacher had warned them. Sad, but true. You can only work your magic on someone else.
The reports said that the police hypothesized that she had fought, that she had tried to chase the attacker down the block before he hit her with the clay pot. Charlie had seen her after the fact, splayed on the sidewalk, when the first responders arrived. Poor brother.
The Opposite of Fate (ARC) Page 10