by Alice Archer
I stared out the window at the leaves until I’d recovered enough to get up and check the door. It unlocked from the inside without a key, thank fuck. I left the door open to air the place out and gave myself a tour.
Under a tarp, I found a beauty of a mattress, unstained and firm, resting on a wooden frame. When I sat on the edge of the mattress, my knees almost touched the wall across from the bed. The whole set-up was tiny, but I loved it.
Hi, honey. I’m home.
I wished I could stay forever instead of having to go back to Seattle and get a job.
My gaze zeroed in on a nail in the wall across from the bed, which gave me an idea. I tore a blank page from my journal, drew an infinity symbol on it with the Sharpie, and impaled the page on the nail.
Once upon a time, a life in which I stared at an infinity symbol on the wall of a treehouse as the seasons changed around me would have seemed ideal. A part of me wished Oliver hadn’t woken me to my deeper flaws, like my reluctance to take responsibility for my own trajectory. I did love the treehouse, but I also wanted more.
I would go to Seattle and get a job, use it to aim myself at a better job. Until then, I had a few more days on Vashon. The treehouse lay buried in acres of deep woods. No one would know.
Two hours later, I’d eaten an early dinner at my campsite, ferried my sleeping bag, water bottles, headlamp, and breakfast to the treehouse, and biked off to explore some more.
After a night on a real mattress, I felt like a new man.
When I visited to the courtyard to shower, I didn’t see Oliver, but I found cash, keys, and a shopping list in the van’s glove compartment. I bypassed the scenic route and headed for town on Vashon Highway, eager to get to the library. Restful sleep had coalesced vague thoughts into questions.
The librarian on duty at the reference desk—a Black woman with beautiful posture—listened intently as I told her what I wanted to do as a career. “I want to do it, but I’m not sure I’ll be allowed to,” I confessed.
“Basically, you need to woo parents in spite of being a mess.”
I laughed, delighted my librarian had a sense of humor. “Ha ha, but, well… yes.”
“Would you want to work outside without kids, to avoid having to impress parents?”
“No. God, no. Who would I play with?”
“Gotcha.” She smiled and winked, and I wanted to be her friend.
“I’m Grant,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for helping me.”
“Isis,” she said, a challenge in the lift of her eyebrow.
“No shit.”
“Truth. Let’s start with state and local child care regulations.” With focused fury, Isis typed on her computer for half a minute.
I’d feared info overload, but Isis stuck with me. She made sure I understood each factor I needed to be aware of before she moved to the next one. The result was a list of websites for me to study, which she emailed to me, and a handwritten action plan we colluded on, which included enrolling at a community college and applying to volunteer with a Seattle parks program, to gain experience working outside with kids.
The first item on my action plan was to get a job at a copy center as close as possible to Mitch’s fancy Madison Park home.
“Isis, may I be frank?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“This first task feels like the toughie. All the stuff after it doesn’t even feel like work.”
“Hmm.” Isis bullied her computer keyboard again. The printer spit out a list of copy shops around Madison Park, with contact info and manager names. “I also emailed it to you,” she said.
“Um… Wow.”
“What else you got for me?” The tough-guy voice Isis tried and failed to use cracked me up. We chuckled quietly to each other.
“Seriously, though,” she said, “can I help you with anything else?”
With the worst shit dealt with, I felt like I’d earned a snoop into Oliver’s life. “What Vashon Island maps do you have? I’d love to get a detailed look at a particular area.”
“Topographical map?”
“Okay. Maybe. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.”
Isis got up to fetch a large volume that turned out to be bound topo maps. She opened it on the desk and helped me find the map I wanted. We leaned forward and I used my index finger to touch the tiny black square of Oliver’s house. That gave me a sudden idea.
“Is the general public allowed to see property records? I mean, would I need the owner’s permission? Or… would I have to go to King County headquarters in Seattle? Is there a fee? God, I hope there’s not a fee.” I held my breath.
“All you have to do is sit there,” Isis said.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. King County property records are online for all and sundry. Here, I’ll show you.” She typed and then turned the screen toward me. “I zoomed in on the area where you put your finger on the topo map. Is this what you’re looking for?”
It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing, and then I couldn’t answer Isis because I was speechless. With Oliver’s house positioned in the center of the screen, we could also see a few surrounding parcels, overlaid with owner names.
I swallowed hard. “Could you… um… zoom out farther?”
On parcels all over the screen, Oliver’s name repeated in tiny type. Oliver Rossi, Oliver Rossi, Oliver Rossi. On parcel after parcel. All around his house. In the vast area I’d explored by bike. Farther south. Much farther than I’d ventured.
“Holy everloving fuck,” I whispered to the computer screen.
Isis, bless her, sat back and let me look without interruption.
The bramble thicket where the kids and I had our adventure was not on Oliver’s property, but was across the road from a parcel Oliver owned. I remembered his distress when I wouldn’t tell him which blackberry bramble I’d chosen for the adventure.
I felt tears come to my eyes.
Oliver can’t leave his property.
That was why Oliver lied, why he’d been lying for God knew how long. He lied to hide, and none of his friends knew. No wonder I freaked Oliver out. From the beginning I’d challenged his boundaries, pushed him out of his safety zone.
“Isis,” I finally said.
“Yes, Grant.”
“You have blown my mind. Can we print some of this?”
“Sure, and I’ll show you how to find it online. Then you can access it by phone when you’re out and about.”
“With respect,” I said, “in some other version of reality, we are totally married.”
“All in a day’s work, my friend.”
After we’d taped together the three pages Isis printed, I used her orange highlighter to outline Oliver’s holdings. Isis checked to see if Oliver owned any other property in the county. He didn’t, and all of his Vashon properties connected.
“Do you know him?” Isis asked. “Oliver?”
“Yeah. He’s been helping me get my shit together.”
“He’s on Vashon? I’m surprised. I haven’t seen him in a long time—not since before his father died, I think.”
I let out a long breath and set down the highlighter.
Isis must have seen something in my eyes, because her smile faded. “Is he okay?”
I couldn’t think of an answer that wouldn’t invade Oliver’s privacy more than I felt comfortable with. He’s in pain. He’s hiding from something big. He’s amazing. He’s an imperious jerk. He’s in love with the wrong person. He’ll be better when I’m gone. In the end, I summed it all up with a shake of my head.
I could tell that made Isis sad.
It made me sad too.
A text to Clementine from the grocery store led to her invitation to stop by for tea and cookies on my way back to Oliver’s. The ra
in picked up again as I drove. At Clementine’s, I tucked my taped-together map inside my jacket and dashed to the front door.
At the kitchen table in her small, elegant cottage, we sipped herbal tea from small, elegant cups while I told her what I’d discovered and showed her the map.
Clementine didn’t seem surprised. “Oliver’s grandfather bought the property the house is on in the early 1930s. I knew Matteo and Lucca bought more property over the years, but I didn’t know their holdings were this extensive.”
“And it all went to Oliver when they died.” I felt like I could stare at the property lines for a week and my discovery wouldn’t have sunk in. “What does he do with it all?”
Clementine laughed her small, elegant laugh.
I looked up from the map.
Green eyes twinkled at me. “He loves it,” she said.
Of course he did.
Chapter 58
Oliver
Do you have a minute?
I glanced at Grant’s text and ignored it, too engrossed in painting to stop.
I’d begun the morning on the honeysuckle blossoms above the heads of the sleeping figures, then gotten lost in a series of vignettes under a tangle of blackberry vines and salal. A group of children cut a tunnel into a dark bramble, crawled into a cave of speckled light. Painting the scene made me feel like I’d been included in their safe bubble of community.
As I painted, I mulled over the facts around the scrap of memory I’d had. My mother had worked downtown in Seattle. She’d traveled between Vashon and Seattle in a limousine with a driver. I could picture the exterior of the car. Until that snippet of memory, I hadn’t remembered being inside her car.
Are you home? Grant texted.
I sighed and set down the paintbrush. Yes.
Can we talk for a minute at the workshop?
Toolshed, I corrected.
I cleaned the brushes and grabbed our contract off the dresser.
Mist rose from the lawn, evaporated in sunlight and treetops. From across the yard, I watched Grant pace inside the toolshed. He’d opened the door all the way again.
When I drew near, he looked up with a frown. “We need to talk.”
“I agree.” I waved the contract at him. “Today is the last day of week four. Your interruptions have gone on long enough. As of today, our arrangement is over. I appreciate your work in the toolshed and with shopping and cooking and all that, but this is where it ends. If you show me your proposal today and I think it’s good enough, I’ll give you the hundred dollars.”
The contract fluttered as my hand shook. I hadn’t seen Grant in a while. I’d forgotten the scope of him. He’d been emaciated when I found him, and brutal in his regard for the world, with an underlayer of childlike fear. That combination had called to me to help. But he’d become something else in the weeks since, and not who I’d intended him to be. His healthier, bigger body emanated intensity that made me want to curl away into myself.
“This is where it ends,” I said again.
Grant dismissed my presentation with a shake of his head. “That’s a piece of paper. Our arrangement worked because we wanted something from each other. What you’re saying is it stopped working for you, but you’re wrong about why.” He took three long strides toward me.
His force field pulled me in.
I tried to stand my ground. Loose strands of hair around my face lifted toward him.
“Maybe,” Grant said in a softer voice, “you want me to leave because it’s hard to keep lying to yourself about what you want from me.”
I held up the contract between us, to watch Grant’s face as I tore it in half with a sharp rip.
Grant’s expression didn’t change. “Did that give you a thrill?”
“It did. It means you’ll be gone soon.”
“I bet I can give you a bigger thrill.”
I crunched the pieces of paper into tight balls in my fists. “Get off my fucking property today or I will call the cops.” I tried to sound resolute.
Grant’s amused look said he didn’t believe me. “Tell me something, Oliver. Why can’t you leave your property?”
My lungs tightened and froze. He knows?
“Hey.” Grant reached for me. “Oh, damn it. Hey.” His fingers touched my face. “It’s okay, Oliver. I didn’t mean to—”
I want to sit next to my mother in the back seat of her big car.
I jerked away, dropped the balls of paper, and yelled with all my might, “Leave me alone.”
Flee. Now.
I became a fox to escape into the forest, turned and ran.
I want to sit next to my mother in the back seat of her big car because I don’t see her very often and because she looks like me. No one else has skin like mine, muddy and white at the same time. Dad calls it russet, but that makes me feel like a potato. My mother has the same hair as me, shiny and really like a fox. I want to touch her pretty hair, to touch someone who feels like me, but when I try to climb onto the seat, she puts a hand flat on the stack of folders by her leg. A briefcase the same color as our hair takes up the seat on her other side. Before I can crawl into her lap, Dad scoops me up and buckles me into my car seat on the seat facing backward. I think it’s mean not to let me sit with my mother, because we don’t get to be together very often.
When the car starts to move, I’m not allowed to get out of my car seat, so I watch her with my painter’s eyes. I look like her, but she’s more still than I am, more like a statue. Dad has to take photos to paint me because I get up and run around, but I could paint my mother as a still life. She keeps her gentle hands in her lap when she talks. I have to use my hands to say things, like my granddad and my dad. Dad is Dolphin Father, because he’s so playful. Also because he needs his pod. Dolphin Father is tall and big all over, like my granddad, The Eagle. That’s how it is with animal people—an eagle can have a son who’s a dolphin, and a dolphin can have a son who’s a fox. Dolphin Father and The Eagle call me Coyote, but I call myself Fox, like my mother.
The dark car windows make the neon lights wrong, like we’re not really in Seattle but in an old movie when someone remembers Seattle. I keep my eyes on my mother in the gray light. Sometimes neon gets all the way inside to make her foxy hair flash and sparkle.
Their voices together in our car bubble sound like a song just for me. Their song goes on and on in circles around my head. The musical notes float in the air, pull us tight together, make me sleepy in our cozy darkness.
I let myself fall sideways against my dad.
Their song stops when Dolphin Father puts his warm hand on my head and leaves it there. We ride together as a pod through the silence, close and safe, up and down the hilly waves in the sea of Seattle. I want to stay awake and not miss anything, but I have to close my eyes.
When my mother starts the song again, she uses a little voice, a voice like trying to hide in a too-small cave. “I must decide by the end of this week.”
Dolphin Father sings back to her in his voice that gets everyone’s attention when we have our entire, biggest, everyone pod over for dinner and shenanigans. The Eagle calls it Dolphin Father’s open-sea voice and says it can get the party started or shut it down. It’s not nice for Dolphin Father to use his open-sea voice in our car bubble, especially when my mother wants to sing quietly.
“I cannot believe you’re serious about this,” Dolphin Father says from the middle of his giant chest.
I keep my eyes closed and try not to move.
Chapter 59
Grant
Oliver blasted across the lawn like I’d shot him from a cannon.
Okay, maybe a direct confrontation wasn’t my best idea.
He was on foot and fast, but I had a bike. I kept him in sight, but didn’t try to catch him. A hard run would bleed off his panic. When he crashed, I’d be there.
/> The route Oliver took didn’t follow any paths I could discern. He ran through a stand of alders so dense I had to walk the bike, and then leave it behind to keep him in sight. The undergrowth thickened. Wild rose vines grabbed at my clothes. Sunshine after all the rain had made the vegetation burst. The air swam with pure oxygen.
I popped free of the vines to see Oliver about fifteen feet away to my right. Half his hair had come loose to hang around his face in sweaty strands. I started toward him, concerned by his harsh breaths and shaking hands.
A blackberry thicket rose at his back, vast enough to rival the one Clementine had shown me. He had nowhere to go.
The pair of work gloves Oliver plucked from the grass protected his hands as he lifted a section of brambles and swung it to the side, like a hinged door. In the time it took me to run to the doorway, Oliver had crawled inside with the gloves and pulled the door closed, leaving me staring at a wall of thorns.
I took off my flannel shirt to use as a makeshift glove, yanked away the chunk of bramble, and ducked inside. A mental replay of the naked longing on Oliver’s face the day of the bramble adventure drove me forward. Whatever pinned him to his property was no joke. I felt compelled to find the painful barb and remove it.
My suspicion that Oliver’s lair included a second doorway, an escape hatch, cost me scrapes as I hurried. My shoulders were wider than the Oliver-sized tunnel. I felt my T-shirt rip and kept going.
When the tunnel ended, it wasn’t at another door.
I wouldn’t desecrate the space Oliver had created by calling it a cave.
Atrium.
Conservatory.
Palace boudoir.
Fortress of thorns at the heart of a kingdom of thorns.
Rugs stained by fallen berries overlapped to cover dirt and the vine stumps Oliver must have cut at ground level. The walls curved upward in a dome. Specks of light floated and swayed in the fragrant gloom, reflections from shards of broken glass hung by strings from the ceiling.