I Mean You No Harm

by Beth Castrodale

  Vic thought of the wedding of Wes’s niece, which was just a couple of weeks away. He’d give her and the groom twenty thousand dollars. Hell—thirty thousand.

  Vic had never had more money socked away, and on days like this, he wondered why he kept doing this shit. For a long time, he had told himself that by keeping something Gene had built going, he was keeping part of his brother in the world, too. But he’d come to believe that this was nothing more than self-serving bullshit, and it seemed certain that if he were to keep playing this game long enough, his luck would run out. Just as it had for Gene.

  “Hey,” Vic said. “I’m lookin’ forward to that fishin’ trip next month. You still up for that?”

  Wes didn’t answer right away. “Sure.”

  “Good. Let’s look at some gear before we go. It’ll all be on me.”

  “Okay, Vic. See you soon.”

  “Bye.”

  Vic stared at his phone, thinking of the three—or was it four?—other clusterfucks that still had to be dealt with. He’d be returning calls, and making new ones, for at least another hour.

  But something froze him: the memory of that look on Layla’s face, just before they retreated into their own rooms. The way she’d stared at him, it was as if she’d known exactly who he was, and what he was capable of doing. No pretty words or stories of his would ever cover that over. In her eyes, he saw Sara’s, and the look she’d turned on him before walking out the door.

  Sara had known that Layla would be better off without him, and she was right.

  Chapter 13

  I-44, West of St. Louis

  Never interrupting her phone conversation, Bette zipped around a Civic-driving feather-foot, then returned to the center lane.

  “Listen, Jake. I don’t want to hear from Auntie M that you’ve been hurting her feelings. If you really can’t stand what she’s making for dinner, you say, ‘Thanks very much, but I’ll have a PB&J.’ And then you make the PB&J. Yourself. All right?”

  As Bette and Jake carried on with their call, Layla thought of what she’d learned of Marla since she and Bette had hit the road, how she’d stepped up to be a second parent to Jake after his father bolted. “Things weren’t great between us before Jake was born,” Bette said. “When he learned about the Down syndrome, that was pretty much the nail in the coffin. But it all turned out for the best for me and Jake, and I think for Marla, too. We’ve become a real family. A happy one, mostly.”

  Apparently, Marla had encouraged Jake’s interest in art from the time it surfaced, making sure he never ran out of markers, crayons, or any other supplies he requested.

  Layla turned her attention to the scenery beyond the truck: rolling green expanses on either side, ending in stands of trees. She looked toward a distant sign, waited for the words to get big enough to read: Mark Twain National Forest, Exit 208.

  How many things had been named for Mark Twain? And what would he have thought of the various tributes?

  Layla guessed he’d be honored by a connection to acre upon acre of natural beauty. But a connection to her old high school? Incubator of inchoate aspirations—good, ill, and indefinable; of twenty-plus varieties of boredom, insecurity, and hostility; of thirty-plus varieties of sexual longing, confusion, and shame; of enduring, ineradicable miasmas brewed from all these things plus sweat, hormones, pheromones, and lingering cafeteria essences? She couldn’t begin to guess his reaction to this. But he’d have to be at least a little bewildered.

  “We’ll be home in a week, give or take a day. … Yes, we’ll have all the art stuff.” Bette listened to Jake’s response, then handed Layla the phone. “He wants to ask you something, about a drawing he’s working on.”

  Layla put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Jake. What’s up?”

  For a moment, she heard nothing but a hoot-tooting like calliope music.

  “You sound like you’re at a circus,” she said.

  “No, I’m in my room. I listen to music when I’m drawing.”

  Layla did, too. “Your mom said you have a question for me.”

  Another pause. Then, “How do you make people look real? I mean, even when I trace him, he looks fake.”

  “Who’s him?”

  “Grandpa Vic.”

  It was still hard for Layla to think of Vic as a grandpa, but maybe Jake saw a different side of him. Maybe he got traces of the Vic that Bette had seen in that old picture of him and his brother.

  “You mean real like in a photograph?” Layla guessed he was working from one of Vic.

  “Yeah.”

  Layla wished that she were with him, that she could see whatever he’d got down on paper so far. “That can be really hard, Jake. Even I’m not that good at super-realistic stuff, and that’s after years and years of practice.”

  Way to go, she thought. Way to make him feel even more discouraged.

  She tried again: “But the real stuff isn’t the fun stuff—at least, I don’t think it is.”

  More calliope music, no Jake. Layla imagined him thinking, What the hell is she talking about?

  Then she thought of something. “Those drawings you showed me, the ones on the refrigerator. They didn’t look like photographs of robots and dogs. They were better than that. They had a life of their own, and feeling. And a story.”

  Layla waited for a reaction but got none. “No one else could have done what you did, Jake. Not another person, and certainly not a camera.”

  Still no Jake.

  Layla went on: “I know I didn’t really answer your question. But did that help?”

  “I think so. I’ll make Grandpa look like a robot. Or a dog.”

  She didn’t know how to reply to this honestly, without discouraging him even more. “You could. But maybe spend some more time thinking about him—about what you liked about him or didn’t, about what memories of him stand out to you.” She sounded like a dime-store art therapist. “Maybe think how you’d make a cartoon of him.”

  “Yeah!”

  Layla imagined his fist shooting up in the air.

  “I’m damn good at cartoons,” he said.

  “I know you are.”

  She noticed they were passing Exit 208. Hello/good-bye, Mark Twain National Forest.

  “I’d like to see whatever you end up doing, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll text the drawings to Mom. And you.”

  “Great. I’ll make sure she gets you my number.”

  After they said their good-byes, Layla handed the phone back to Bette.

  A silence fell between them—the comfortable kind, shared by people who’d grown accustomed to each other’s company. Layla’s twelve-year-old self, the one who’d felt trapped with Bette in that rundown motel room, never would have imagined that the two of them would be at ease with each other, let alone have any meaningful conversations. She was grateful that things had changed between them, and starting to think that this road trip might be the beginning of a longer-term relationship, not just with Bette but maybe with Jake, too.

  Layla was also grateful that the mail stalker had moved further back in her mind, if only temporarily. She wasn’t constantly wondering whether any new packages from him were awaiting her at home. And she hadn’t received any more weird texts.

  It was Bette who finally broke the silence. “I don’t think I ever told you that I really like your paintings. I checked them out on your website.”

  Layla had never accepted praise easily. It had taken her a long time to just say, “Thanks” in response and leave it at that, which she did now. But Bette wasn’t done.

  “Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I took another look at the one you did about your mom. About what happened to her, I mean.”

  It was The Woods, the one the stalker had printed out and violated.

  “I keep thinking about it, and some feelings I’ve been
having about it, and I wonder if they’re at all in keeping with any of your own. If you don’t mind talking about this.”

  Bette glanced her way, as if asking for permission. Her eyes looked more shadowed than ever, as if the loss of sleep were finally catching up with her. But Layla knew that if she were to make another offer to take over the driving, Bette would turn it down.

  “I don’t mind.”

  A new silence fell, a tense one. Then Bette said, “I noticed there weren’t any people in the painting, or any suggestions of action. It was just bursts of color, and that big dark patch. And I felt—”

  Layla waited for Bette to finish her thought. “You felt what?”

  Bette waved her hand. “Forget it. You’re the artist. And it was your mom. It’s not my place to flap my gums about my own feelings.”

  Fighting the restraint of her seat belt, Layla wriggled around to face Bette. She wanted Bette to feel the sincerity of what she was about to say. “I want to hear them. I mean that.”

  Bette stared ahead for a while. It seemed she was trying to find the right words—never easy when it came to art. Not for Layla, anyway.

  “I stared at the painting so long, I got to feeling that I wasn’t seeing a scene so much as existing inside in someone’s head. Yours or your mom’s, or maybe both. Those explosions of color felt like fear to me, a reaction to things you just can’t control. And the dark patch? It made me think of blackouts from my drinking days, when people would tell me I did all kinds of shit I had no recollection of. What got to me more than anything about those times was everything I would never know—not just about what I did or said but what was going on in my brain, and why.”

  Bette signaled left, passing another car, then got back in the travel lane. “I guess I’m just saying that that dark part of the painting felt like all the stuff you’ll never know about what happened. Even if you find the killer. Even if he tells his version of the story of what happened. ’Cause your mom’s story—the only one that really matters—is gone.”

  Layla swallowed against the tears she felt coming, managed to hold them back. “You said it better than I ever could. And that’s why I hate that fucking painting so much. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to destroy it.”

  Bette glanced her way again, this time with alarm. “Hey. I didn’t mean to suggest there were any problems with the painting. Look how it got me thinking, and wondering, and I know I’m not alone. I mean, it got into that show, and written up in that article.”

  Layla took a deep breath, tried to pull herself together. “It’s not about anything you said. It’s about feelings I’ve had for a long time, back before I even started that painting.”

  A car sped past, music blasting: a bubble of content obliviousness that Layla wished she could enter right now. But she pressed on with her point.

  “That unknown you talk about? For a long time, I didn’t want to get anywhere near it, because even trying to begin to picture what happened with my mom, I just couldn’t do it. But as I got older, I kept thinking about how alone she was at the end. How no one was there for her but that, that monster. And she was just blotted out, silenced, which felt like—”

  She tried to find the words. “—like turning everything over to him. Every last bit of the reality of what happened. All the power. So, in the painting, I was trying to wrestle with all that, and maybe take something back from him. But all along, part of me knew that would be impossible, that the whole process would just be an empty exercise. And whenever I look at the painting, I just think what a huge failure it is. Which is okay.”

  Bette gave her a questioning look.

  “What I mean is, I needed to paint it, and I did. And at some point, I’ll want to destroy it, which’ll feel good. It might even make having done the thing worthwhile.” She tried to gauge Bette’s feelings about this, but Bette was staring ahead, poker-faced. “Does that make any sense?”

  “I think so.” Layla heard doubt in Bette’s voice. “The important thing is, you doing what you need to do. If destroying the painting is part of that, go for it. I’ll be right there to hand you the gasoline and matches, if you’d like.”

  Layla smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chapter 14

  Ross Woods

  Seven months earlier

  Thirty years had passed since he’d seen the old oak. Long enough to imagine it had been claimed by lightning, or time. But there it was, still set apart from the other trees, its trunk bent this way and that, its bare branches splayed and gnarled.

  That day, orange-gold leaves still clung to the oak and carpeted the ground where she sat, sketchpad on one crossed leg, eyes trained up at the branches. Until he arrived.

  He’d called out, Hello! and waved on approach, hoping to put her at ease. And hadn’t she returned his smile, just briefly? After all, they weren’t strangers, not entirely.

  Funny finding you here, he’d said. Except finding her had been no accident.

  At the diner, some loners read, or let their minds rove over God-knows-what. He watched and listened and overheard, and in that way received a gift.

  She goes drawing every Sunday?

  Far as I know.

  Where?

  Don’t know. She told me she drives different places, after her shift.

  All he’d had to do was wait for the end of one of those shifts, then follow her at an unalarming distance. Until he found her, as if by happenstance. He’d imagined them talking about art, maybe more, away from the diner’s distractions.

  But the sight of Sara stole his words. Sara as he’d never seen her—in jeans and a fisherman’s sweater, her dark hair loose about her shoulders.

  What brings you here? she said at last, with a wariness that nudged him to speak.

  This is my favorite place to walk. And that oak calls me every time.

  He’d always had a talent for reassuring lies.

  So you’ve seen it before?

  Many times. I call it my misfit, my beautiful misfit.

  She sat up—with interest, he thought—and seemed to take a closer look at the tree. He did, too. Felt its orange-golds hum in his blood.

  Why?

  It twists and turns and goes against what feels right, for trees. Yet, you and I are drawn to it.

  He took her silence, her continued attention to the tree, as agreement.

  Can I see your drawing of it?

  She started to rise, but he lifted a hand to stop her. Let me come to you. Seeing suspicion in her eyes—or was it fear, already?—he said, Then I’ll be on my way.

  He sat down beside her and reached for the sketchpad, but she held it close, turned it so the drawing faced him.

  She’d captured most of the tree in broad strokes and had just started adding texture and shade along the trunk: a suggestion of bark. More than a suggestion where the trunk met the crown. There, the detail was so fine, he could almost feel the bark’s roughness. Just as he could almost feel the skin of her face, her neck, as he drew her at home from memory—her profile caught in glimpses while she worked.

  He raised a hand to her cheek, not thinking. She flinched and got to her feet, stepped back.

  I mean you no harm, he said. It’s just that—

  Again, a loss for words. This time, they didn’t come back. He felt the darkness building, something he believed he’d be spared from, with her.

  He stepped forward, she stepped back, clutching the sketchpad like a shield.

  You know this is dangerous, she said.

  What she didn’t need to say: Not just for me.

  She was right, of course. That was why it was already too late. He let the darkness rise up and take control, until Sara as he knew her was gone, until she was nothing more than a problem to be solved. Just like all the other women.

  I’m sorry, he said.

 
And he’d really meant it, hadn’t he? He’d truly believed that this encounter would be a beginning, not an end. But maybe love was far from the savior he’d imagined it to be. Maybe it only made his urge more painful, and deadly.

  He took some rope from his car. He returned to the car, later, with her sketchpad. What he left here, to be found—not on the oak, but on a tree she’d had her back to—was a necessary deception. What he carried away was a truth: her half-finished drawing, where something of her lingered in the detailed places—a bit of her soul, perhaps, if such a thing existed, in anyone.

  Now, in the hissing rain, he stared at the oak, thought of what he’d discovered the previous night, online: the article, the painting, the photo of the artist: Sara’s daughter. Layla. With that heart-shaped face, those dark, serious eyes, she looked like Sara, returned.

  But her painting? Surely, Sara wouldn’t have approved. Though no work of art was at its best on the Internet, the flaws in Layla’s painting were immediately clear. How could that assortment of blotches and smears do this place justice?

  There can be no woods without a tree. There can be no Ross Woods without this tree.

  He pulled his phone from his coat and photographed the oak from where Sara had sat, drawing it. The first shot was blurred, the second off-angled, the third perfect: just the right addition to the flawed painting—a gentle correction, a touch of truth, from one artist to another.

  Also in need of correction: Layla’s words in that article. Didn’t she know there would never be a void where her mother was concerned? Over the years, he’d done drawing after drawing, painting after painting, of Sara. Keeping her with him, and granting her the nearest thing to eternal life.

  Now, it was Layla’s turn.

  Oh beautiful misfit, beautiful replica, I’m holding you close to my heart.

  Chapter 15

  I-40 (Route 66),

  East of Amarillo

  To Layla, yesterday’s drive through Oklahoma had felt like the longest stretch so far, with Bette seeming even more tired and withdrawn. The whole time, she’d barely eaten.