by Karen Dionne
FOURTEEN
NOW
Rachel
I’m trapped, stuck on the sleeping porch for who knows how much longer because Diana and Charlotte are downstairs in the kitchen fixing breakfast and the upstairs floors are creaky and they’ll hear me if I move around. I can’t sneak down the hall to talk to the ravens for the same reason. I’m cold, I’m hungry, and I have to pee. The smell of frying bacon wafting up the stairs tickles my nose like those vapor trails you see in cartoons, making my mouth water and my stomach growl, and I haven’t even eaten meat since I was six years old. And I really want a cigarette.
I’m also angry—not so much with my aunt and my sister, though there’s plenty of that to go around, but with myself. Granted, the decision to stay hidden for a time was mine. And yet somehow, without her even knowing that I am here, my sister is pulling the strings once again. It’s hard to believe that less than twenty-four hours after I’ve come home, I’ve fallen right back into our old pattern. Diana always dominated our family. Her wants, her needs always came ahead of mine. I used to think that this was normal, and that my secondary status was because I was the second child, until one of my therapists pointed out that doing everything my sister told me to do, even if some of it was risky or downright dangerous, was my attempt to claim my share of my parents’ attention. Until then, I would have said it was more a matter of self-preservation.
So here I sit. The only good thing about being stuck on the sleeping porch is that I have a clear view from here of their studios in the barn. If for some reason they don’t go to work today, then my plan to fly under the radar is going to be over before it starts, because I’m pretty sure my bladder is about to turn traitor. The sound of running water from the kitchen doesn’t help.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The only question is, will I be able to accomplish everything I need to do before Diana and Charlotte find out that I am here? Last night I almost got sidetracked. I still desperately want to find evidence that my sister is scheming to have me committed, but I can’t chase down this new development at the expense of my original plan. Everything hinges on whether or not I killed my mother. If it turns out I did this terrible thing as I have always believed, then Diana can take everything I own and literally lock me up and throw away the key, and I won’t care. But if I can prove that I didn’t kill her, which is obviously what I’m hoping will be the result now that I have reason to doubt, I will do everything in my power to bring my sister down. The sooner I settle the first issue, the sooner I can move on to the second.
At last, the kitchen door slams. Seconds later Charlotte and Diana cross the stretch of frozen pea gravel between the lodge and the barn. Charlotte’s white-blonde hair is as gray as I’d imagined, though my sister’s equally blonde hair is now buzzed boot-camp short. They’re both wearing jeans and flannel shirts. No jackets because it’s a short walk, and not worth the trouble of putting on a coat and hat and mittens and then immediately taking everything off. Whatever they’re talking about must be funny because Charlotte suddenly throws back her head and laughs. I feel a familiar twinge. My mother used to say that things weren’t always easy for my sister, and that it was hard for her to make friends, and I should be happy that she and Aunt Charlotte were so close. But it hurts to think of the two of them living here happily ever after during all the years that I was alone.
As soon as the barn door closes behind them, I run to the nearest bathroom, then head for my childhood bedroom and throw open the window.
“Hello! Are you there?”
No answer.
I open the window wider and stick out my head. “Hello? Anybody home?” The question is stupid—I doubt ravens even understand the concept of home. But I don’t know how else to get their attention.
Still nothing.
I shake off my disappointment and close the window. The ravens will be back. This time of year, instinct demands that they get their nest ready for their chicks. Meanwhile, I have needs of my own.
I go downstairs to the kitchen and stir up the coals in the woodstove and add several pieces of cedar for a quick, hot blaze, then hover over the stovetop as close as I dare without setting myself on fire until the feeling in my fingers returns. The cast iron frying pan that Diana and Charlotte used to cook their breakfast is cooling on the back of the stove. The bacon grease congealing in the bottom looks about as appetizing as gray mud, but I’m so cold and hungry, I don’t care what I eat as long as it’s hot. I pull the pan over the firebox and open the refrigerator to look for bacon and eggs. I figure I can get away with cooking a hot meal if I fix the same thing for my breakfast that Charlotte and Diana ate for theirs. I’ve never cooked bacon and eggs before in my life, but how hard can it be?
Not hard at all, it turns out, as long as you’re willing to eat eggs that are black on the bottom and bacon that is both half-burnt and half-raw. I score a cup of lukewarm coffee from the bottom of the pot and sit down at my old place at the table so I can keep an eye on the barn—not that I’d have time to put everything back and run upstairs if Diana or Charlotte were to unexpectedly return, but I’ll at least have fair warning. I can’t begin to describe how bizarre it feels to be back. I spent a lot of time in this kitchen as I was growing up, and not only at mealtimes. Whenever it was too cold or rainy to go to the observation blind, I’d sit at this table doing my schoolwork while Diana sat opposite me doing hers. Occasionally, if Diana was in a good mood and she noticed that I was struggling she would mouth the test answers to me when my mother wasn’t looking. More often she would hide my pencil when my mother’s back was turned or pinch the back of my neck as she passed behind me on her way to get a drink of water or kick my legs underneath the table until my shins were bruised. Once she took my homework before my mother had seen it and burned it in the woodstove. When I told her I was going to tell because I’d worked very hard on that essay, Diana said I wouldn’t do that if I knew what was good for me and squeezed my neck in that place where if she pinched me too long I’d pass out so I’d know she meant business, so I didn’t. I’ve since learned that when people grow up with a dominant sibling, they tend to be anxious and insecure. It’s a wonder I turned out as well as I did.
I fork a mouthful of eggs and push them around in my mouth with my tongue and try not to think about baby chicks as I swallow. I take a bite of bacon and don’t think about pigs. By the time I’ve rinsed my dishes and put everything back where I found it, my stomach is only very slightly queasy, my mind only slightly repulsed at the thought of what is now sitting inside me. I go upstairs to check again on the ravens. Still no sign of them, so I crack open the window and smoke a quick cigarette to get the umami taste out of my mouth, then toss the butt and close the window and go over to the closet.
I push aside my child-sized clothes and shoes to pry up the loose floorboard that covers my secret cubby and reach inside. My fingers brush wood and metal. The touch is electric. Instantly, I am jolted back to the past. I take my rifle from its hiding place and hold it up to the light. That my Remington is still here is a resounding argument in favor of my innocence. Say the police were somehow wrong when they concluded that both my parents were shot with the Magnum. Even then, it’s hard to imagine that after I accidentally killed my mother and my father used this same rifle to kill himself, I would have had the presence of mind to pick it up and return it to its hiding place before I ran away.
I sit down on the bed with my rifle across my knees. The gunstock is smooth with age, the barrel more pitted than I remember, but the Remington was used when Max bought it for me. I think again about the first time I shot it, how my nerves tingled in anticipation, the taste of the forbidden as sweet as candy in my mouth. Knowing that I was holding an instrument of death in my hands was empowering. I remember thinking that I could swing the rifle around and point it at my sister before she realized what was happening and shoot her as payback for all the mean things that she had done to me. The tho
ught immediately made me feel ashamed, though not as much as it should have. After that, whenever Diana would say or do something cruel, I would come to my bedroom and shut the door and take out my rifle and hold it. Not that I would ever shoot my sister or any other living creature, but the idea that I could if I wanted to was comforting. Looking back, I think something wild and dangerous stirred inside me that day.
I check now to make sure that the rifle isn’t loaded as Max once taught me to do and carry it downstairs to the gun room. The room looks entirely different in the morning light, warm and welcoming with the sun shining through the stained-glass window, throwing pools of colored sunshine on the floor and reflecting off the glass display cases. I used to sit on the Oriental rug in the middle of this room imagining that I was the king’s trusted talking lion advisor in the fairy tale depicted in the window—“The Twelve Huntsmen” by the Brothers Grimm, which says all anyone needs to know about my great-great-grandfather’s legendary sense of humor. Diana’s display case of birds now covers the place where I used to sit. To this day, I don’t understand why my wildlife biologist parents let my sister practice taxidermy—to me, taxidermy represents nothing but the waste of a perfectly good animal—but I do love that the gun collection has been restored. My great-grandfather would have been pleased.
I turn my back on the room and position myself in the wide arched open doorway with my feet spread. I have no idea what will happen when I reenact my vision in the place where my parents died; if I will see something new, if the new thing will reinforce what I have always believed, or if I will see something that contradicts it. It’s exciting to think that I’m about to find out.
I lift my rifle and point it toward the taxidermy in the great room. I close my eyes and imagine that I am eleven. I am tall for my age, but pudgy. Two long brown braids hang down the middle of my back. I’m wearing jeans and my favorite red plaid shirt—the same clothes that I was wearing when I was found, according to the police report. I point my rifle at the zebra in the great room. I imagine myself pulling the trigger. The zebra squeals, whirls, and falls. I point my rifle next at a gazelle. I’m about to pull the trigger a second time when I hear my parents’ voices outside on the front porch. The doorknob turns. Before I can hide my rifle in a dark corner of the gun room and pretend that I was doing something else—
“What are you doing?” my mother screams when she sees me. “Put the gun down!”
I do as she says. There’s a big bang. My mother falls. I stand over her looking down. Her mouth is open, and her eyes are closed.
“Rachel!” my father screams. He takes my rifle and looks at me in shock and horror and turns the rifle on himself. There’s another big bang—
—and the vision ends.
I shiver. Open my eyes and look down at the rifle in my hands. I feel as though an old friend has betrayed me. I was so sure that conjuring up my vision in the place where my parents died would reveal something new. But if anything, this vision I just experienced was less vivid than those I’ve had before. Thinner, paler, small. Like watching an old black-and-white movie with the sound turned off.
All will become known, the raven promised, and I believed him. Yet I still remember nothing about that day; not what I had for breakfast, not where I went. I don’t know if I went with my mother to her observation blind, or if I followed my father on his rounds, if the day was sunny or overcast, if it was raining or snowing. This was early November, so it could have been doing either or both. I don’t know any of these things because I don’t remember.
I go back upstairs to return my rifle to its hiding place and check the ravens’ nest again. Of course, the nest is still empty. I’m beginning to wonder if I only imagined our conversation. Maybe I can’t talk to birds and insects. Maybe I really am crazy. Maybe Diana and Charlotte didn’t bring me home because they knew that the hospital was where I belonged.
I sit down on the window seat and shake out a cigarette and stare into the forest. The trees are closer than I remember, their branches almost touching my window, as if they know that the lodge doesn’t belong here and they’re trying to swallow it up. People tend to think of forests as dark and dangerous places inhabited by giants and monsters and fearsome wild beasts, and I can understand why. Bad things happen in the woods in fairy tales and legends. Snow White is abandoned in a forest. Hansel and Gretel get lost in the woods. Red Riding Hood meets her wolf in a forest, and on and on.
But forests can also be magical places where nightingales sing sweetly, and glass castles spring up overnight, and birds and animals are able to talk, and wanderers and travelers find refuge. Certainly, I never felt frightened when I was in these woods. This forest was my home.
And with that thought, a wisp of a memory returns. A genuine memory that is as clear and true as the day it happened. I did shoot my rifle the day my parents died. Of this I am one-hundred-percent certain. But I wasn’t in the gun room when I fired it.
I was in the forest.
FIFTEEN
THEN
Jenny
Two feet of packed snow cover, skies more sunny than not, barely a breath of wind, and a temperature hovering around fifteen degrees make this the perfect January day to snowshoe out to the west cliff. Winter is the only time we can access the cliff because of the wide swath of marshland between it and the lodge that at any other time of year is too wet to cross. It’s a long hike, about as far from the lodge as it’s possible to get and still be on our property, and even under ideal conditions the trek takes well over an hour. But with six inches of fresh snow limning every branch and pine bough and hoarfrost hanging off the trees and drifting through the air like diamonds, the view from the top of the cliff looking out over our frozen valley is going to be worth the effort. Peter and I have made this trek the past two winters, and now that Diana is twelve and almost as tall as me, I wanted to share this amazing experience with her.
Naturally, she fought the idea tooth and claw because when does my daughter ever do what I want? But I was determined that this time I was going to win. Ever since we set up her taxidermy workshop, taxidermy is all she wants to do. I should have anticipated that my single-minded daughter would get far more caught up in her new endeavor than I would have preferred. We put her in the old milk room in the barn because the poured-cement floor and six-inch cement sidewalls that made the room rodent-proof back in the day will serve the same purpose now, and installed a good ventilation system in the ceiling because the room doesn’t have windows, but still: breathing in the odors of death and chemicals hour after hour and day after day can’t be good for her. In the end I had to promise that if Diana came with us on this hike, we’d upgrade her set of flensing knives, bribery being one of the few behavior modification techniques that actually works, though you won’t find that particular nugget of hard-earned wisdom in any of the “Raising Your Psychopathic Child” how-to books.
“How are you holding up?” Peter calls from the back of the line as we wend our way through a dense stand of tall white pine. Peter and I have been taking turns breaking trail, and at the moment I am in the lead. Breaking trail is a lot more strenuous than following because you have to lift your knees extra high so your snowshoes clear the deep powder and your feet don’t get tangled and you end up tripping yourself, but I like going first, seeing the pristine, unmarked snow sparkling away in all directions in front of me, knowing that wherever I choose to place my feet, Diana and Peter will have to follow. The pines in this part of the forest are so straight and tall and uniformly spaced they almost don’t look real, as though someone painted them against the sky. The lighting feels artificial as well; sunny yet diffuse because there’s so much frozen moisture in the air. Even the sound of our voices feels muffled. Every breath chills my lungs, energizing me in a way that humid tropical air never could. Someone who has never spent time in the far north would probably think we’re crazy to be outside on a day like today, but they have no idea
how invigorating a winter hike can be. Plus, it’s great exercise.
“I’m fine,” I call back.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine,” I say again, trying not to let the annoyance I feel at having to answer the question a second time creep into my voice. Peter’s concern is genuine, if misplaced. Pregnant women are perfectly capable of doing any physical activity they’re used to right up until they’re ready to give birth, be it horseback-riding, or ice-skating, or acrobatics, or ballet. I’ve spent years trudging around in these woods, with snowshoes and without; for me, hiking a couple of miles to climb the west cliff is nothing. It’s true that my back muscles are screaming from the effort to counterbalance my enormous belly, and my lung capacity is half what it should be thanks to the baby compressing my lungs from below, but I wouldn’t feel any differently if I were walking around inside the lodge.
“I’m hungry,” Diana says. “And I’m tired. And I’m cold.”
“What do you think?” I ask Peter. “Do we have time for a quick break?” Stopping for a few minutes to let her rest and grab something to eat will address two of her three complaints. Ignoring our daughter is never an option.
Peter looks first at the sky and then at his watch. “Five minutes. If we stop any longer, you’ll really be cold,” he warns her.
I shrug off my pack and pass around bottles of water and three of Charlotte’s amazing homemade granola bars. Peter is correct when he says that we can’t stop long. We’re dressed for the weather with long underwear and insulated snow pants and down parkas and wool mittens and hats and scarves and massive sub-zero boots that would be the envy of a polar explorer, but the best way to stay warm is to keep moving. We’ll build a bonfire and rest and warm up with a picnic after we reach the top. Peter is carrying firewood and kindling and newspaper and matches in his pack, Diana has marshmallows and hotdogs and hotdog buns in hers, and I have a wide-mouthed thermos of homemade chili along with the paper bowls and plastic utensils we’ll need to eat it. Bringing food with us on this hike is not the problem it would normally be even though we are deep in bear country because all my bears are asleep. Occasionally during the late winter or early spring a hibernating bear will rouse itself enough to poke its nose outside its den if the temperature climbs above freezing, but that’s not happening today.