Little Girls

by Ronald Malfi

  Laurie blinked. The power of the memory had been strong and sudden. At her elbow, Susan was staring at her with a mix of apprehension and confusion in her dark eyes. Laurie summoned a smile for her daughter. After some hesitation, Susan offered her one back.

  “Where did all this stuff come from, Mom?”

  “From years and years of people throwing it down in there,” she said.

  “Why would someone throw jewelry down a well?”

  “Sometimes people do silly things, Susan.”

  “I bet those things have snake poop on them.”

  “I’ll bet some of them do,” Laurie said.

  The side door banged as Ted came into the kitchen. He had his sneakers in his hands and the cuffs of his jeans rolled up. His hair was wet and slicked back. “That’s some booty, huh, ladies?”

  “There was only one earring down there?”

  “As far as I could tell. There are some cracks in the mortar and a small drain in the wall. The drain had a mesh covering over it but it was all rusted and there were pieces missing from it. I guess the other earring could have gotten washed away. Not to mention I don’t know how deep that sludge is on the bottom. There could be a triceratops skeleton down there.” He ran a hand through his wet hair, then sniffed the palm and made a face. “You think any of that stuff is worth anything?”

  “Some of it, maybe. The diamond. Maybe the gold watch, though I’m sure the works are ruined. It was my father’s.”

  “How does a man’s gold watch wind up at the bottom of a well?” When Laurie didn’t respond, he said, “I’m gonna grab a shower.”

  With her thumbnail, Laurie attempted to scrape some of the calcification off the face of the brooch. This had also been her mother’s, passed down to her from Laurie’s grandmother. She felt sick to her stomach just holding it.

  “I knew it,” said Susan. “I knew we’d find real treasure.”

  “Yes.” Laurie set the brooch down on the kitchen counter. “Why don’t you go upstairs and clean yourself up, too?”

  “Okay.” Susan hopped down from the chair and scampered off.

  Laurie picked up the doll. Water streamed from the seams where its limbs met its body. Its face looked like that of a burn victim, its features melted and indistinct. She turned it upside down and heard what sounded like a stone tumble through its body.

  Something crashed in the parlor. Laurie jumped, knocking the earring into the sink. The diamond stud rolled around the basin, though before it could disappear down the drain, Laurie caught it. She set it back on the countertop and then went out in the parlor.

  Her father’s urn had been knocked off the fireplace mantel. It lay in pieces at the foot of the hearth, its grayish, powdery contents in a dusty heap in the center of the broken pieces. It looked like a prehistoric egg someone had dropped, its yolk turned to ancient dust.

  “Susan?”

  But Susan didn’t answer. Laurie crept closer and saw the approximation of a partial footprint in the ashes. When a cool breeze struck her back, she turned around and saw one of the parlor windows was open. She expected to find dusty footprints leading to the window, but there were none. Cold, she shut the window, locked it. Then she swept up the broken bits of urn and her father’s ashes into a dustpan, and dumped them unceremoniously into the kitchen trash.

  When she turned around, she found herself staring at the plastic doll on the kitchen counter. It lay facing her, its blank eyes staring right through her. She had dropped it on the counter when she heard the crash from the parlor, but now it looked as though it had been perfectly positioned to watch her from across the room.

  She went to it, brought it over to the sink. She moved the arms up and down, spilling more gray water into the basin. Gripping the head, she gave it a sharp twist and jerked it sideways until it popped off. It could have been an actual corpse for how rancid the smell was coming out of it. She turned the doll upside down, leaking black sludge into the sink. Something else tumbled out as well, the item she had mistaken for a stone when she initially upended the doll. But it wasn’t a stone. It was a large brass key with the number 58 engraved on it.

  Laurie spent the rest of the evening wondering if she was losing her mind. By dinnertime, she suggested they order pizza, telling them she was too tired to cook. Ted pulled a face, but didn’t comment. Susan cheered. When the pizza arrived, they ate in the parlor. Mourning the loss of the Victrola, Ted selected similar music from his iTunes playlist and cranked up the speakers on his laptop. Susan no longer laughed at the old music; she now listened to it with her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth set in an appearance of concentration that showed some hint of approval.

  “Could it be true?” Ted said as they were halfway through a Schubert composition. “Has the obstinate young ragazzina actually begun to appreciate the music?”

  Susan wrinkled her nose. “It’s just okay,” she said, snapping from her trancelike stare at the computer screen. There was pizza grease at the corners of her mouth.

  “I can’t believe they took the phonograph but left the records,” he said. “Do you care if I keep them? Or did you not want them to come back to Hartford with us?”

  Laurie blinked and looked at him. She had been in a fog and hadn’t fully been listening. “The records? No, that’s fine. Keep them if you want.” She shrugged. The slice of pizza in the plate on her lap had hardly been touched.

  “Are you feeling okay, Laurie?”

  “I’m still just a little tired.”

  “You should go to bed early tonight.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Ted sipped at a lowball glass of amber liquor—more of what he’d been scavenging from the liquor cabinet since their arrival at the house. When he set the glass down, he said, “In all the commotion today, I forgot to tell you that Steve Markham called. The meeting with Fish is set up for Friday afternoon in Manhattan. He’s also got us a meeting right after with the producers to talk about something else I’ve been working on. You know that play about the ex-priest and the prostitute?”

  “This Friday?” she said. It was already Tuesday.

  “I’ll leave early in the morning and drive back after the meetings. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

  “You won’t be too tired? Maybe you should go up the night before.”

  He laughed. “Now you sound like Markham.”

  “I just don’t want you to blow your opportunity.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

  After dinner, Susan practiced for forty-five minutes on the piano while Ted sat beside her, instructing. Several times he corrected her finger placement on the keys and showed her how to work her thumb under her hand to “glide” to the next key to create a more fluid scale. Restless, Laurie looked in on them every once in a while, though she found it nearly impossible to sit in one place for any sustainable length of time. Several times she went into the kitchen to look at the items Ted had salvaged from the well. Some were laid out on a square of paper towel—the watch, the ring, the diamond earring, and a few other things. Some of the other items that had been more corroded—the brooch, the keys, most of the coins—were soaking in a pot of mineral acids, which Laurie had located in the basement under the stairs among other sundries. Some of the corrosion had come apart, but she could already tell that the image on the face of the brooch was gone for good.

  Here they are, Laurie thought, all of Sadie’s evil secrets. What horrible wish did you make on that brooch to punish me and keep me in your grasp, Sadie? What evil thing did you hope for? That my mother would die? How about the gold watch? Were you trying to orphan me, you little monster? Thinking of this now, it astounded Laurie at how calculating and manipulative Sadie Russ had been. She tried to think of Susan behaving in such a fashion—she was just about the same age as Sadie had been when she died—but she found it impossible. There were uncharted depths within her daughter, just as there were in all little girls, Laurie knew, but she did not beli
eve Susan was capable of anything even remotely as wicked. And if Sadie Russ has truly come back as Abigail Evans, to what purpose? To exact some kind of revenge on me? Did she break into this house and murder my father just to lure me back here after all these years? This last thought was outlandish enough to snap her back to reality. Sadie Russ had been dead for almost thirty years. People weren’t reincarnated as other people. Or, if they were, they didn’t look the same, and they certainly didn’t come back seeking revenge. Yet . . . those things Abigail had said to her . . .

  For what purpose? To what extent?

  When Laurie came back out into the parlor, Ted and Susan were just finishing up a duet of “Camptown Races” on the piano. As the final notes sustained, Ted slung an arm around his daughter and squeezed her. They were both grinning goofily at each other. When they sensed Laurie behind them, they turned around, still grinning.

  “Did you hear us, Mom? Pretty good, huh?”

  “Very good. But it’s time for bed now.”

  Susan groaned.

  Ted rubbed is daughter’s head and said, “Tomorrow’s another day. Get up early and start fresh.”

  Susan swung her legs over the piano bench and stood up. “I can’t wait to tell Abigail about the pirate treasure we found in the well today.”

  “I don’t want you to play with Abigail anymore,” Laurie said.

  Both Susan and Ted turned to look at her. The matching expression on their faces would have been comical had they not looked so much alike at that moment—so much that they could have been one complete person split suddenly into two.

  “How come?” Susan said.

  “Because I don’t like her. She’s a bad influence.”

  Ted looked like he wanted to smile—like he thought she might be joking with him—but he couldn’t quite get there. “Are you serious, Laurie?”

  “You should have seen her the other day down at the park,” Laurie said. “She was out of control. She threw rocks at some girl and hurt her, made her cry. And then she wouldn’t listen when Liz called her over.”

  “The other girl threw rocks first!” Susan countered.

  Laurie glared at her daughter. “No talk backs.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “Hush up for a second, Susan,” Ted told her. “Laurie, what exactly happened?”

  “Just what I said. She was out of control, and she’s certainly not the type of girl our daughter should be playing with.”

  “There’s no one else here,” Susan moaned.

  “Susan knows better than to do what some other kid does.” Ted was trying to be diplomatic, but Laurie thought he just sounded condescending. “She’s old enough and smart enough to know right from wrong.”

  “You didn’t see what I saw, Ted. This is not up for discussion. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now.” She turned back to Susan, whose eyes were red and glassy now. “Do you understand me? I forbid you to play with that girl.”

  Susan kicked one leg of the piano bench. “That’s not fair! I hate it here!”

  Laurie laughed. “You’re the one who wanted to stay in this house.” She looked at Ted. “The both of you.”

  “I hate it here and I hate you!” Susan shouted.

  “Susan—”

  “You’re always so mean!” she cried, then took off down the hall.

  Laurie shouted her daughter’s name once more, demanding that she return to the room until she was excused, but Susan’s footfalls were already pounding up the stairs. A moment later, the bedroom door slammed.

  “Disrespectful brat,” Laurie breathed.

  “Hey.” Ted stood from the bench and went over to her. When she tried to sidestep him, he gripped her by the wrist and tugged her toward him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Me? Oh, that’s rich. Our daughter’s running wild, with no discipline whatsoever, and I’m the problem?” She jerked her wrist free of him.

  “Susan is not running wild and she has plenty of discipline. She’s a damn good kid and you need to loosen up a bit. Enough is enough, Laurie. We’ve both been very patient with you throughout this whole thing, but I can’t sit idly by while—”

  “I’m the mother and she’s the child! It’s not you and her against me, it’s supposed to be you and me against her.”

  “No one needs to be against anyone.”

  “All you do is sit idly by. That’s all you’ve ever done, leaving me to be the heavy. You play with her, you teach her piano, you have a great relationship, she hugs and kisses you, and that’s wonderful for you, because Mommy’s the bad guy. Mommy’s the monster.”

  “That’s incredibly unfair.”

  “And what the hell do you mean you’ve both been patient with me throughout all of this? My father died. What do you want, a medal?”

  “Keep your voice down,” he told her.

  “If that girl comes by the house asking for Susan, you send her home. I don’t want her coming around here.”

  She fled from the room before he could say another word. In the kitchen, she put the remaining slices of pizza in the fridge, then crushed up the pizza box and stuffed it in the trash. There was cold coffee in the pot on the stove. She poured some in a mug and heated it in the microwave. Her hands shook as she brought the mug to her lips.

  Ted came in, a grim expression on his face. What bothered Laurie most was that he didn’t look angry. It was how he had regarded her in the days after the highway incident—a combination of concern and pity. He folded his arms and wandered toward the kitchen table, looking like he contemplated pulling out one of the chairs, but remained standing in the end.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said. The timbre of his voice matched the quality of his expression.

  “What?” It came out in a bark.

  “Are you planning to leave me?”

  She set the mug of coffee on the counter but didn’t answer. What surprised her was that Ted’s question didn’t surprise her. She couldn’t quite say why that was . . . but she had sensed the tension between them for some time now, even before coming to this house.

  “Don’t take it out on Susan if this is really about us,” he said.

  “Ted—”

  “And don’t think I haven’t noticed,” he said, gesturing toward her. “You haven’t been wearing your wedding ring. You haven’t bothered to contact a realtor about selling the house. . . .”

  “We just got the name and number from Liz the other night.”

  “Come on, Laurie. You didn’t need to wait for Liz’s friend’s business card. You could have called someone on your own, someone else. And when I brought up selling the house, you brushed me off, but you wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “You think I’m planning to leave you and move in here?” she said. The idea wasn’t just absurd—it was frightening. The thought of staying here permanently, living in this house again.... It would be like being sucked into a vacuum and suffocating.

  Ted dragged a chair away from the table but still didn’t sit in it. “I’m at a crossroads here, Laurie. I can’t figure you out. It’s like you’re . . . punishing me. . . .”

  She said nothing.

  “I don’t know if you want me to say it and put it out on the table, or if you rather I say nothing and you go on quietly torturing me.”

  And then suddenly she knew. “Don’t say it,” she told him. Her voice trembled.

  “I had an affair, Laurie.”

  The No! she wanted to shout at him got caught halfway up her throat. She stood there with her mouth hanging open, no sound coming out.

  “It was a stupid, selfish, careless thing. It’s been over for a long time now and I haven’t seen her since.”

  It was as though she were listening to him from the other side of a padded sanitarium wall. His voice was distant and her ears were plugged with balls of cotton.

  “You’ve always been closed off to me, Laurie. You’ve kept your secrets and I’ve kept mine. But those secrets are breaking us
apart. I’m telling you about what I’ve done because I want the admission to save us.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “That’s the problem! A year and a half ago, you and I were living two separate lives. That’s no way to sustain a marriage and it’s certainly no way to raise a little girl.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Her face burning, her eyes leaking, she looked at the floor.

  “I can only do my half, Laurie. We’re a team. We’re partners.”

  “Some team.”

  “We both need to come clean, Laurie. Not just me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about secrets. I’ve told you mine. Now you need to tell me yours. If we’re going to survive it, we’ve got to be straight with each other. No more secrets, no more separate lives. We’re one, Laurie. We’ve got to come clean.”

  “I’ve got no secrets. I’ve never had an affair. I’ve never cheated on you.”

  “Then what is it? It’s something else.”

  “It’s nothing!”

  “Is it about your father? Or that girl? That . . . Sadie?”

  “There’s nothing!”

  He released a shaky exhalation. The chair legs scraped across the floor as he slid it back toward the table. “Then we’re both doomed,” he said. His footsteps were nearly silent as he left the room.

  You fucking creep, you fucking coward, she thought . . . yet she was unsure whether she meant Ted or herself. . . .