by Mary Gray
And yet, I’m not sure how to explain it. It was like this silent part of him was begging for me to understand something unspeakable. At least, something he couldn’t speak about with me. But the way he held me ... I could feel this deep, resounding pain, wound up tightly like a spring. But I didn’t know how to help. How to get him—the man I was falling for—to talk about what he obviously, so desperately, didn’t want me to see was plaguing his mind?
So, we danced. The white twinkle lights hung from the horse stalls like fine jewelry, and the other dancers swayed around us as if we were collectively feeling the same thing.
It seems I’ve been hobbling around my bedroom, imitating the dance WT and I did that night. I suppose I got swept up in the moment. Didn’t even realize I’d set the vase of flowers on the floor. But how could Tansy insist on shielding me from the truth when every memory makes me so happy?
They show me I’m loved. That I know who I am. If Tansy and I could work together, I’m sure there’d be no chance of the avalanche happening.
Maybe what Tansy needs to soften her stance is to see some of WT’s belongings. She could be reminded of how happy we were together.
I hobble across the foot of the bed, careful not to knock into the settee. My ankle screams in protest, but there’s something I need to do. Need to see.
Wrenching open the closet door, I step inside a tiny room that’s smaller than builders make for houses nowadays. Though it is sufficient, with a healthy amount of clothes—mine on the left, WT’s on the right.
While the clothes rack is newer—people used armoires and trunks back in the day—right away, there’s WT’s navy blazer. His salmon one. Green. I lift the green one to my nose and breathe in the cedar scent. I forgot he carried this with him—an echo from his truck’s dashboard’s wood inlay.
Sliding each garment across the rack, I take a moment to absorb the smooth and coarse textures, recollecting the way he looked in all of these. “Presidential,” I would say, and he’d balk. Every time. It’s not that he was old, or even clean shaven, but he had an understated, commanding presence everybody noticed in Deep Creek. Like Tansy said, he’s the most beloved of all the town’s residents. He couldn’t help it. Everyone loved him and his quiet ways.
Reaching the back of the closet, I stop a little short, because a white stretch of fabric catches my eye. It must be one of his button-up shirts—except then it would be in the front with his other shirts. Maybe it’s in the wrong place.
It’s pretty far back. I have to hyperextend my arm to grasp the garment and lift it with the hanger, but, oh, it’s not even a shirt. The hanger sags with impossible weight.
Heaving the garment nearer, I prepare to examine it closer. It must be my wedding dress—put on the wrong side. But something about the way the garment hangs doesn’t feel right.
I take a step back. Accidentally knock over the flower vase. Holding up the robe, I find that it has a rope tie around the waist.
With the boards covering the windows, it’s pretty hard to see, but taking a step sideways, I hold up the heavy garment in the creamy stream of light.
A red and white square-shaped cross marks the breast while a white, triangular-shaped hood drops to the floor.
I stoop to pick it up, my once-forgotten fever rushing over my head in a wave.
The hood is long. About three feet.
And there are cut-outs.
For eyes.
29
I drop the robe.
No. No, no, no, no.
This is a nightmare. I’m dreaming.
I wasn’t married to a man who ...
He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that kind of a person.
A loud crack reverberates from my back as I collide with the bedpost. Something scampers from behind the curtain, and I fall back onto the bed as Jerusha in her tortoise-shell coat springs from the doorway. Her sweater catches on the side of the door, and she tugs on the threads, hissing while pulling herself free. All at once, she darts around the corner, reminding me of a spooked, deranged sphynx.
I gather the robe in my arms. Wad it up like a piece of garbage, because that’s what it is. If I could, I would incinerate the thing. But I have to put it somewhere, so I barrel back into the closet. Stuff it into the farthest corner, wishing more than anything I never explored the space.
Swinging the door closed, I press my back into it, praying all of this is a dream. I shuffle toward the bed but don’t have the heart to sit on it. I sink to the floor, pull my knees to my chest, Tansy’s stupid gray-green skirts fluttering out around me. What I just saw—it can’t be right. It’s WT’s Dad’s or something.
WT and I, we were happy. He was kind and thoughtful, and I could feel his goodness in every part of me. But, apparently ... that was a lie?
Sure, we had a few arguments, but he also wanted to get away from this stupid town. But now I know his secret. The secret that was constantly plaguing his mind.
Is that what they do here in Deep Creek?
But Francesca’s here ... she can’t be. She has to get out. Out. I scramble up to warn her, when I’m hit by another terrible thought.
What if there’s another robe in there?
No. No, no, no; no way.
I’ve become immobile. I can’t get myself to move—can’t even get myself to take a peek.
If there is another robe in that closet, it has to be somebody else’s. Not mine. Not even Tansy’s.
I inch up from the ground and creep toward the closet, knowing that I have to look inside that door a final time. But I don’t want to. I’d rather pour acid in my eyes.
Holding out my arm, I wait for my other, dictatorial half to stop me cold, but she isn’t here. Tansy’s MIA. So I grab the brass handle of the door and give it a whirl. Steel myself to look inside.
One breath.
Three.
Okay, inside are WT’s blazers.
Navy, salmon, green.
His other shirts and jackets are still in here, too, and way, way in the back is a wooden hanger that comes up empty. Oh, yeah, because I stashed the robe on the floor, brilliant me.
It’s still there. Like a dead animal. But I’m not burying it for Tansy.
If Tansy or I were to have a robe of our own, I suppose it would be on my side of the closet. But since when have they had women in their ranks?
My side is stuffed with dresses and slacks and shirts and belts and sweaters and jackets and pencil skirts of polyester blends that have my hands shaking. Sweat beads like gooseflesh on my neck. Drips in rivulets down my spine.
What if I find one? What if I have a robe, just like WT’s?
No wonder Francesca’s been cagey.
I can’t see the colors of any of my clothes. My eyes have gone watery. I think maybe I’ve set my sights on something ivory, but when I pull out the garment, it’s a white, ruffled blouse with cute button-up sleeves.
I drop the blouse and hanger. Hands won’t stop shaking. Must force myself further into the closet to make sure I don’t miss anything.
There’s a wedding dress, but it’s in a plastic, sheer dry-cleaning bag. Little white embroidered flowers dot the snow-white fabric. Pretty.
Flipping to the end of the clothes, I hit some wooden slats. I’ve just reached the back wall of the closet. No more robes. Thank you, Tansy.
I do a final look-through before swinging the door closed, pushing my back into the door, and sinking to the ground. Without really thinking it through, I nudge my other half. “Tansy ..."
She doesn’t so much as offer me a resounding sigh. She’s probably ignoring me, because I pushed her too hard. We do have a fever, plus a wrecked foot. And she duct-taped me. So, what do I do? Tansy knew the robe was up here, just waiting for me to find it.
I still can’t believe this is my life.
Actually, for the first time since all of this started, I get why Tansy’s decided to lock herself away. The world is dark. Cruel—much crueler than any of us want to think.
I remember ... a white blanket. Tulips in the back yard. Picnicking.
A white tablecloth on long, rectangular tables and billowing bedsheets.
My white wedding dress comes to mind, with those little embroidered flowers, and the skirts dollop, so elegant—like melted ice cream.
But now in those dollops, all I can see is the truth of that robe—how it stands for nothing but disgusting and nauseating hate.
30
Crack, break.
Crack, break!
Looks like we’re in a cream Victorian gown, and Tansy’s chopping a mangy carrot, gold bracelets clanking. I don’t have a clue how long she’s been going at it, but carrots, along with a mountain of potatoes and onions, are piled on the counters, a mile high.
Tansy must have gone to the root cellar. I didn’t even know we had a root cellar. How long have I been out? Her fingers are moving so fast, I’m afraid a finger’s going to get in the way.
Crack, break.
Crack, break!
“Do you see why I asked you to drop it?” Tansy grabs another carrot and annihilates the thing. “Now go away! I’d like a little more alone time, if you please.” Except Tansy and I both know that a “little” alone time could mean up to a few weeks.
Actually ... between Tansy’s diet and her tendency to hoard things, I’d guess there’s enough food here to keep her going for six months, at least.
“I don’t need you,” she says. Crack! Break. “I could go on for the better half of a year. Maybe, by then, you’d realize you crossed the line.”
Crack, break!
Panic burrows through my chest like a restless king snake. I don’t want to be locked away again. Time to smooth over her feelings.
“I’m sorry.” For safety reasons, I try to take control of the knife, but it’s like wading through water. “You and I both know, searching a closet in my own bedroom isn’t a punishable crime.”
“YOU WOULDN’T LET IT GO!” Tansy beheads another carrot before accidentally nicking our finger with the knife.
Blood pools on our fingertip, and she has us stomping over to the sink, bustle swooshing. The dishes and teacups in the cupboards shake in their boots, and I don’t know if I should be shaking in mine.
Turning on the water, she sniffles, “Look”—the water blasts at full power—"I really didn’t want it to be this way. We had a deal. You get the groceries, I tuck away all our secrets n’ keep us safe. But now that I know that you’ve been diggin’ around and goin’ WAY past our formerly agreed-upon boundaries, I see now that I’ve been way too lenient. Fact of the matter is, I can’t trust you, G.”
“But I just investigated the room where you left me.”
She growls something in French I don’t recognize. This isn’t just about the robe—as if that isn’t enough. She’s upset about something else. But knowing Tansy, she’ll never say. So I watch and wait while she slowly turns off the water and dries our hands with the speed of an eighty-year-old woman. Practically moving in reverse, she seizes the next carrot and resumes her chopping.
I don’t interfere. I know better than to push her when she’s angry. Instead, I allow a peaceful co-existence to settle between us. Kind of similar to when we watched the birds together through the skylight. How many cardinals did we see?
“I know you’re still there.” Tansy exhales. “You’re about as cloak and dagger as a nine-pin bowlin’ set on Broadway.”
“Sorry ... but you know I have no control of when I go or stay. You’re the one who always has me leave.”
I expect her to shut me out this very moment, just to prove I’m right, but she merely continues her chopping. Which makes me wonder if she actually wants me here. Maybe she secretly wishes to talk about what’s bothering her. It has to be quite the load, shielding me from so many things.
“Your grandmother stopped by,” she says mulishly. She didn’t say “our” grandmother. That’s good to know. Hmm. “She wanted you to know that Jesse Beauchamp’s not goin’ to be botherin’ you anymore. Except how can she promise that? Jesse Beauchamp’s the ‘Sheriff’ and Grammy is ‘Grammy.’”
“Don’t you have faith in her?”
Tansy snatches up a potato, which has more eyes than the peacocks at the exotic zoo in Boyd. “Jesse Beauchamp is the devil himself. She’s an outsider, so he’ll put her in prison just to get her outta the way.”
I try to relax, but I can’t help stiffening our grasp around the knife. It didn’t occur to me that Grammy would still be considered an outsider, but I suppose she wasn’t raised here if she met Edgar in her fifties. “We have to help her!”
Tansy grabs another carrot, and I force myself to take a few deep breaths. I have to consider what I found upstairs. Think rationally.
Maybe Jesse has plans to plant WT’s murder on me. That’s saying WT’s dead, but Tansy says he’s still alive ...
A freezer-cold chill scurries up the back of my neck, and part of me fears that, any second, WT’s going to jump out from behind one of the pillars and strangle me. He’ll force me into one of his robes. Swear that I agreed to all of this since the beginning. He’ll remind me of some field trip he took me on where he revealed the inner-workings of the Klan—there, I said it—and, somehow, I hate to go there but somehow ... he brainwashed me?
Tansy’s fingers are moving so fast I’m sure to lose a pinky.
“Shhh.” I hush her within our mind. If I could, I’d set my hands on her shoulders and tenderly read to her from her favorite Shakespearean play. Macbeth. Or Titus Andronicus, possibly. “We have to work together, ladybird. It will be okay.”
Sensing my sincerity, Tansy eventually calms, shoulders loosening. Still, she doesn’t set down her knife. Instead, she has us tightening our fist around the wooden handle and forces us to do this synchronized chop for five minutes straight. It almost feels good. Therapeutic—if it weren’t for the fact that we have a Klan robe upstairs, in the very room I shared with WT.
This is the longest I’ve ever been a silent bystander while Tansy’s been awake. It actually shows me that she can focus on a job without any extra dramatics, as surprising as that can be.
At long last, and only after our fingers have numb, Tansy sets down the knife. Wiping our hands on the tea towel, she says, “It’s time you saw my favorite place.”
31
Tansy pauses before a closet, a little door between the front entry and the stairs to the left. When she twists the handle to let us in, an entire bedroom with a bed and desk and curtains lures me inside. Floral curtains, floral wallpaper, floral crown molding. It’s definitely a feminine room, and spread out on all the surfaces, are teeny-tiny glass figurines.
A unicorn.
A dog, bear, cat. Too many to keep track of, but they’re beautiful, tinted ballet slipper pink.
As we limp inside, I find the ones on the desk are tinted blue, like cotton candy. A beautiful collection of birds of all sizes.
Straightening a crooked giraffe on the bedside table, Tansy appraises the entire room like she’s manning an antique shop. “There.” She pets the brittle giraffe with great fondness. “That’s right.”
She has us straighten the velvet shade of a lantern, too, and a rose-embroidered kerchief folded in half on a chest of drawers to the right of the doorway. In all my time with her, I’ve never seen Tansy be so calm. So orderly. It’s even less musty in here—as if the dust has been absorbed by the glass figurines.
“I bring you to this room,” Tansy says with a lilting hum in her voice, “to show you how fragile we can be. The deer are always the first to go.” She gestures to a collection of glass deer lying at the foot of the bed, with broken antlers and legs. “Then the cranes.” She gestures vaguely at the broken neck of a solitary crane. A pillow cushions its head, and Tansy has us perching on the bed’s side.
After having us sit and stare in wonder at the crane for what feels like hours, she whispers, “Well, what do you
think?”
I don’t want to say the wrong thing. If I say they’re pretty, she’ll assume I have sticky fingers and hide them away from me. If I say they aren’t pretty, she’ll accuse me of having no taste. So I remain quiet, a silent bystander as she pets the fragile, broken head of the crane.
Pulling in our legs under our massive cream skirts, she says, “We are fragile, G. We wish to do the right thing—but the world is plagued with monsters. Everything is so much better if we stay inside.”
I’d like to push her to elaborate. But, instead, she plucks up the crane and cradles it in our palm with the devotion of a nun attending a convocation ceremony.
“Seven months ago,” she says, “we saw something truly terrible.” She pets the rock-hard back of the crane. “Something no one should ever see. Some people are equipped to handle such happenstances. Others ... well, they’re already vulnerable, because of how they were raised.”
I think of Edgar, but don’t say a word. I don’t know the extent of what he did to us—or what Grammy did to defend me—but I can’t deny the twisted feeling I get every time I think of him, down to the daunting, gray mustache on his face.
But Tansy’s saying we saw something later ... something to do with the Klan? Something to do with WT? “It’s how you and I more fully split—whatever we saw, right?”
Tansy peers closer at the crane’s tiny, oval-shaped eyes. “That’s right.”
“But what if you’re wrong in assuming that I’m unable to handle what happened?” I hate to think that I’m as fragile as a bunch of glass figurines.
Tansy grinds our teeth. “You forget that you asked me to be the bearer of secrets.”
I wish I could go back in time. See whatever I need to see in a quick, matter-of-fact memory, then give it back to her if it’s too painful. That wouldn’t be too greedy, right?
I also wish I knew if it was smart to keep digging. But if it has something to do with the robe, I have to know for Francesca. I have to keep her safe.