by Karen White
I tried to hide my disappointment—and my guilt. I’d hardly thought of Gary at all since getting onto the plane. I smiled. “Sure. I don’t mind.”
He reached to take my overnight bag, pausing for a moment to look down into my face, his own serious. “I’ve enjoyed your letters very much, you know.”
“Oh,” I said, his words taking me by surprise. I patted my hair into place beneath my hat, then followed him out into the parking lot. We headed toward the sea of cars and approached a red-and-white Corvette convertible. When he stopped in front of it, I asked, “What happened to your Oldsmobile?” I carefully placed my garment bag on top of the other bag in the trunk.
He shrugged. “Lacy wasn’t crazy about it. She really wanted me to have a Corvette.” His voice sounded flat, just like a lawyer who had practiced hiding his emotions from his speech.
“Well, I loved your Oldsmobile.”
He gave me a sidelong glance before donning his sunglasses and putting the car into reverse. I laid my head back on the seat, letting the sun seep into my skin, my hand on my hat so it wouldn’t fly away. I’d seen a yellow chiffon scarf in the glove box when Wes had retrieved his sunglasses, but I knew to whom it belonged and wasn’t going to ask to borrow it, even if it meant destroying my new and favorite hat.
The weather was unseasonably warm, hovering in the low seventies. It had been a long winter in Philadelphia, and my body screamed for the sultry warmth of New Orleans.
As we sped down the highway, the rushing wind prohibited conversation. I clung to my hat and spent the time surreptitiously examining Wes and comparing him to his brother. Gary had sent me his senior picture, and I remarked to my father how little he had changed since I had first seen him.
With my head against the backrest, I admired Wes’s strong profile and was struck again by the similarities between him and Gary. They shared the same straight, slender nose, the nostrils forming perfect ovals. The narrow foreheads and prominent cheekbones marked them as related, despite their differences in builds. Whereas Wes had blossomed into full manhood, Gary’s cheeks and nose still held a roundness to them. Perhaps it was owing to Gary’s slightness, but even at seventeen, he still looked like a prepubescent boy.
We listened to the prattle of the deejays on WNOE the rest of the way home, not speaking. He parked the car in the driveway and slowly pulled the key from the ignition. Neither one of us moved.
“Wes.” My voice cracked and I swallowed.
He turned to me and removed his sunglasses, and I saw the red marks they left under his eyes.
“Ask me out to lunch again, okay?”
His cheeks creased in a smile. Wes opened his mouth to say something when the front door flew open and Gary appeared on the threshold. His face was pale, and he gave me a wan smile as he sauntered down the front steps, his mother close behind him dressed in skintight pencil pants and a midriff-baring blouse tied above the waist, her ever-present alligator brooch pinned above her right breast. A cigarette in a holder trailed smoke behind her.
I stepped out of the car, and Mrs. Guidry enveloped me in a perfumed hug, then kissed me on both cheeks, European style. A hint of alcohol teased the air surrounding her, not completely masked by the Shalimar perfume she still wore. “Aimee! We’re so thrilled you could be here. I don’t think Gary’s slept a wink in two weeks!”
“Mama!” Gary protested, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets, his eyes not quite meeting mine. He had grown in the months since the previous summer, and he stood almost as tall as his brother. They towered over me, wearing identical grins.
“Hi, Gary,” I said, grinning back at him and unsure whether I should hug him. We had been greeting each other after long absences for years, and I remembered him giving me a little punch on the shoulder when we had said good-bye only six months before. But this time was somehow different. We had left childhood somewhere behind us, perhaps on the levee above the muddy river. The bridge into adulthood had been crossed, and we stood warily facing each other, looking for whatever remained of our childhood friend.
He leaned toward me, arms outstretched, and hugged me. I hugged him back and could feel how his back and shoulders had broadened. He squeezed me tighter and then I felt the old familiar snap of my bra strap.
“Gary!” I shoved him away, laughing, and he laughed with me, a bright glint in his eyes. This was my Gary, and I recognized him.
Wes retreated to his car to retrieve my suitcase, Gary close behind. As soon as Wes lifted the suitcase, Gary wrested it from his hand. “I can carry that.”
He stretched his arm to take my garment bag from Wes, but Wes held it out of his reach. “I got it, Gary.”
Gary lunged for it, grabbing the side of it and pulling at the thin cover. “No, I can do it.”
I stared at them in horror as they played tug-of-war with my dress. I wedged myself between them. “May I please have my dress before you two ruin it?”
A small yellow MG convertible pulling up in the driveway interrupted us. I recognized Lacy immediately, with her crown of blond hair covered with a pale pink scarf, white sunglasses sparkling in the sun. A long-boned hand waved from behind the steering wheel, a gold bracelet glinting on her wrist. She looked like Grace Kelly, and my stomach made a sick lurch.
Gary used the opportunity to grab my garment bag. I didn’t dare offer to take the suitcase, even though he struggled to lift it. Firm muscles showed on his arms, but I could see the effort it took for him to take a deep breath of air as he lumbered to the front steps. He teetered a bit on the top one, but managed to propel himself forward and through the doorway.
I paused a moment before going in and turned to see Lacy greeting Wes. Her small, curvy body molded to his as she stood on her toes to kiss him, long scarlet fingernails visible in his dark hair. Turning away, I spotted Ray Von in the foyer, staring at me and shaking her head.
An arm went around my shoulders and I looked up into Mrs. Guidry’s face. Bright red lipstick was smeared on her lips and sat on her teeth, her eyes unnaturally bright, bringing to mind a zombie in those horror movies Gary and I liked to watch, like the real person inside had long since gone, leaving only a shell behind.
She gave me a squeeze and guided me inside. “This is going to be so much fun, Aimee. You must show me your dress—and I insist on helping you get ready before the ball tomorrow night. I don’t have a daughter, so I hope you don’t mind indulging me.” She seemed to be reading from a script, her words saying the right thing but meaning nothing to her.
Gary stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Mama is having her portrait painted in her ball gown by an artist from up north. He came down here just to paint her; isn’t that swell?”
Mrs. Guidry smiled at Gary. “He’s a very modern painter—let’s just say that Mr. Guidry isn’t a fan—but I love his style, and I’m flattered that he’d come all this way to paint me. I’m unveiling it after the ball.” She squeezed me again. “I’m so excited to have a daughter here.”
She continued to chat about her preparations and past balls, her speech rambling and her words tumbling together like runaway cars at an amusement park ride. Gary had told me that she hadn’t attended a Mardi Gras ball in years, his father not thinking she was ready, but something this year was different. I welcomed her chattering as I tried to sort through my feelings.
The door shut as Lacy and Wes followed us in, her arm draped possessively through the crook of his elbow. Her sunglasses rested saucily on top of her gold head and she gave me a wide smile. “Hello, again. It’s Annie, isn’t it?”
I shook my head, making a conscious effort not to stoop my shoulders so I wouldn’t look like such a giant next to her compact petiteness.
Wes shot me an apologetic grin as Mrs. Guidry spoke up, her cigarette dropping ash on the hardwood floor. “No, Lacy—it’s Aimee. And I must say she’s grown up to be as pretty as her name, don’t you think?”
A loud crash from behind us shifted the attention from me, and we all turned.
Fronds from a large green fern lay heaped on the marble tiles of the foyer, dirt-encrusted roots splayed out amid the crumbled remnants of its former home. Terra-cotta bits and pieces lay scattered across the floor and around the shoes of a caramel-skinned boy.
My gaze traveled up a pair of skinny legs, past knobbly knees and cutoff shorts, raked past an almost nonexistent neck to the face. I tried not to flinch. Half of the boy’s face drooped and sagged in bunches of skin, as if someone had gathered it together before it was dry and allowed it to set. The closed left eye slouched into the cheek area, the lids melded together. It wasn’t until I saw the right side of his face that I realized he was a boy just a few years older than me. A bright green eye stared out at me from his wrecked face.
“Xavier!”
When he turned his head at Ray Von’s voice, I shuddered at the small knot of skin where an ear had once been.
Ray Von knelt and started picking up the pieces of the broken planter. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, his gaze fixed on me while Ray Von continued picking up chunks of terra cotta. “Help me clean this up before somebody gets cut.”
The boy bent down and picked up a large section of the pot and began scooping up the broken pieces and putting them inside the shell. A jagged tear in Xavier’s thumb began gushing blood and dripping rapidly onto the floor, unnoticed by him as he continued to pick up pottery pieces while spreading the blood around in a grotesque pattern.
I swallowed, wondering why he’d been staring at me and why nobody else seemed to care that he was bleeding. “You’ve cut yourself.” I reached into my pocketbook and pulled out several tissues and handed them to him.
He took them from me, his expression passive, and allowed Ray Von to wrap his hand and lead him from the room.
Mrs. Guidry watched them, her body completely rigid, her faced blanched, and for a moment she appeared to be terrified. And then she looked at me with her vacant eyes and smiled. “Watch where you step, Aimee. I promised your father that I’d return you to him as good as new.” She excused herself and went toward the kitchen.
Gary leaned toward me. “That’s Ray Von’s son. He’s come to live with us. He looks scary, but he’s nice. Comes and stays with Ray Von during breaks sometimes and we do stuff together.”
I looked at Gary, my eyebrows raised in an unspoken question. As before, Gary knew what I was asking without my having spoken. “His father burned him when he was a baby.” He squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry—his father’s long dead. Xavier’s been at a boarding school in Ocean Springs, but he got too old to stay there. My dad said he could come here.”
Mrs. Guidry returned and placed a dish towel over the mess on the floor. “I don’t think anybody wants to look at that.” Her eyes furtively darted toward the front parlor, finally resting on the liquor cabinet. A nervous smile twitched her lips. “Come on, Aimee. Let me get you all settled in your room, and we’ll have a nice drink together before lunch.”
She breezed past us to the wide stairs, her slender hands holding the dark mahogany banister. Gary and I followed with my bags, and I was glad to be away from the smeared bloodstains and the young man whose scars didn’t appear to be all on the outside.
Later that night, as I settled into my large four-poster bed, I listened to the night sounds of an old house as wind gusted against the windowpanes. Somewhere, a loose eave whistled into the darkness, creating an unnatural moan. I plumped up the pillows behind me and grabbed a romance novel, not yet quite ready to close my eyes and submit myself to sleep.
Then I heard it—a thump-thump coming from under my bed. Every hair on my body stood at attention, my mouth drying. I curled into a tight ball in the middle of the bed, waiting for something to grab at any exposed appendage. Almost imperceptibly, the yellow damask bedspread began to slide from the end of the bed and slowly disappear over the edge.
“Help.” My voice was hardly louder than a whisper. The wind and moaning of the eaves seemed to intensify, almost drowning out the thumping from under the bed.
I sat up straighter, unwilling to have any contact with the bed. I hunched over my legs, trying to decipher the sound I was hearing. I tilted my head, trying to imagine why I was hearing laughter. Smothered laughter.
I leaned over the edge of the bed and saw a decidedly large, albeit human foot peeking out from under the dust ruffle. Before I could drop a table lamp on it, Gary burst forth from under my bed, his face contorted from the effort of trying to hold in his laughter.
“What are you doing?” I screamed.
He lifted himself off the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking his head in an effort to control himself.
“You think it’s funny trying to scare me to death?” I was struggling to stay angry with him. “And where in the hell were you when I was changing clothes?” He lifted his arm to protect himself as I slammed my pillow over his head. I sat like an Indian chief in the middle of my bed, arms and legs crossed, staring him down. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing tricks?”
As his darkened eyes contemplated me, his laughing sputtered, then died. His gaze slowly traveled down my neck to the low neckline of my white baby-doll pajamas. I crossed my arms higher on my chest, realizing the fabric was only a shade thicker than transparent.
He licked his lips. “I, um, guess I should go now.” His gaze seemed reluctant to leave my chest.
“Yes. You probably should.”
Still, he sat at the edge of my bed, within an arm’s length of me. He raised his eyes to my face, then leaned toward me. I didn’t move.
A knocking on the door made him shoot off the bed, stumbling over my slippers in his haste. He catapulted himself at the door and threw it open.
“What is all that noise?” Ray Von poked her head around the door.
Gary scratched the back of his head. “Just Aimee being immature. I’m going to bed now. Night, Aimee.” He disappeared into the darkness without looking back at me.
Ray Von entered my room, her eyes like black shadows in the dim light of my bedside lamp. She approached the window and undid the tiebacks on the draperies, letting the thick yellow fabric fall together.
“That boy shouldn’t be in your room, you know.”
I scooted back against the headboard. “He wasn’t invited.”
“Hmmm.” She shook her head and moved to the other window. She eyed the night-light I had plugged into the wall outlet. “You still scared of the dark, Miss Aimee?”
I gave her a dismissive wave, not letting on that I was still, in fact, terrified of the dark. That when the lights went off, I was a little girl again, feeling the hot stickiness of blood on my hands, and smelling sweat that wasn’t my own. “No, of course not. Just habit, I guess. I bring my night-light with me wherever I go.”
A flicker of light warbled in the air in front of her, and she shot out her hand and captured it in her fist. “It’s a lightning bug. Isn’t that strange?” Her voice lowered to a grumbling whisper. “All that mosquito spraying just about killed all them lightning bugs.” She clucked her tongue. “This one must be here for a reason.”
She walked over to the side of the bed and picked up my empty drinking glass. “Lightning bugs bring death to a house.” She indicated the glass. “You keep him in here till he dies so he can take the death with him.”
Flattening her hand against the open end of the glass, she then slammed it upside down onto the nightstand.
Putting her chin down to her chest, she said, “Don’t let him out, now, you hear?” She narrowed her eyes at me, then left the room, the latch clicking slowly as she shut the door.
I stared at the hapless insect, its body tapping against the sides of the glass, its abdomen glowing brightly. I reached over and lifted the little prison, allowing its captive to escape. I flipped off the lamp and lay still, listening to the howling wind and following the blinking of the bug until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 13
The weather-cock on the church spire, thou
gh made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it . . . did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.
—HEINRICH HEINE
Julie
I sat on a stone bench by the garden fountain, watching as Beau played with the flotilla of wooden sailboats his uncle had given him. Their bonding had been sudden and surprising, at least for me. Or maybe because they were both male it was natural for them to find common ground in toys that snapped together, or had wheels and moving parts.
Beau’s red hat sat next to me on the bench, not too far from him, but not with him. I took this to mean that his dependency on it was lessening, and hopefully his grief, too. I suddenly wished for a completed River Song, so that newer and happier memories could begin to fill the empty space carved by his mother’s absence.
“Vroom, vroom,” Beau said as he pushed the sailboats around in the water. He looked so intent and happy that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that sailboats didn’t have motors. Recalling the lines of docked boats at the marina in Biloxi, I figured he’d have to learn more about watercraft eventually, but for now I’d let his imagination overrule reality.
I looked down in my lap at the Abe Holt book I’d borrowed from Trey’s study, finally having found a few moments to go through it. I opened the front cover and flipped to the opening pages, noticing again the copyright date of January 1999. The year before Monica ran away. I flipped to the title page and found myself staring at long, elegant script written in black ink. Merry Christmas, Monica. From one art lover to another, with love from Grandmother Aimee.
I looked at the signature for a long moment, wondering why Aimee hadn’t mentioned the book. But it had been given to Monica so long ago that she’d probably forgotten it. Or maybe even assumed that Monica had taken it with her. Still, I wondered what had precipitated the purchase and the gifting of it.
As I absently strummed my finger along the edge of the closed pages, my fingernail caught on something. Lifting the book, I noticed a tiny extra space between two pages somewhere in the middle. I slid my thumb to the edge of the page to open it at the break, rewarding myself with a paper cut.