Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  They sat together by the side of the pool, feet dipped in the water. Chloe’s were kind of ugly and bony, another surprise. Ingrid considered her own feet just about her best feature.

  “What’s the name of that little beach below the Falls?” Chloe said.

  “Black Beach,” said Ingrid.

  “Remember swimming there when we were little?”

  “Yeah.” The memory sharpened in Ingrid’s mind—clear water bubbling by, the falls going shhh not far away.

  “A cool spot,” said Chloe.

  “Yeah.”

  They fell silent. Through the tall windows on the other side of the room, she could see a gravel road winding between some outbuildings toward the river, and across it Prescott Hall, silhouetted against a sunset sky. The man with the wheelbarrow stood by the side of the road, little puffs of smoke rising above his head.

  “Who’s that?” Ingrid said.

  “Carl Kraken the third,” said Chloe. “Grandson of Carl Senior, caretaker since forever.”

  “And son of Carl Junior?”

  “You got it.”

  “The whole family works here?”

  “Not Carl Junior. He works at the high school.”

  “Teaching what?” said Ingrid.

  “Carl Junior teaching? That’s a good one,” said Chloe. “He’s the janitor.”

  “Are you going there?”

  “Where?”

  “The high school,” said Ingrid. “Next year.”

  “The high school?” said Chloe. “I’m staying at Cheshire C.D.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Thinking of transferring?”

  “We couldn’t afford it.”

  “Really?” said Chloe.

  She slid into the water, glided down. In the distance, Carl Kraken the third turned suddenly as though hearing a sound. Ingrid watched. A car appeared on the gravel road, moving toward Carl the third. Not just any car, but a dinged-up old Firebird. Too far away to read that HELL ON WHEELS bumper sticker, but Ingrid could make out the sticker itself. The Firebird stopped. Carl the third got in. The Firebird kept going, around a bend and out of sight, moving toward the river.

  Ingrid turned back to the pool. Chloe was treading water, watching her.

  “Do you know Sean Rubino?” Ingrid said.

  “No.”

  “His father put in your chandelier.”

  Chloe didn’t even glance at it. “True?” she said. “There are so many workmen in and out. I never know the names.”

  Ingrid gazed back at Chloe. None of her friends would ever say something like that. Did Chloe even know how snobby she sounded? Maybe it was just the simple truth—so many workers that you finally stopped noticing. It suddenly struck Ingrid that Chloe might be lonely.

  “How about something to eat?” Chloe said. “I’m starving.”

  six

  SOMETHING TO EAT turned out to be dinner in the Ferrands’ formal dining room, just Ingrid and Chloe, plus the maid, who served. Ingrid had never been served before, except in a restaurant, and this was different. In a restaurant, the waiter brought the plates with the food already on them. Here the empty plates were on the table and the maid came through a door from the kitchen with the food—lobster bisque, duck à l’orange with wild rice, a mesclun salad—in bowls or serving platters, and then stood just to the left of you while you half twisted around and tried to serve yourself without messing up. Turned out the aristocratic life was harder than she’d thought.

  But not without a lot of bonuses. Take the plates, blue and white, with delicate scenes of Chinese people in strange landscapes. Or the silverware, so polished and heavy. And there was a fireplace, with a crackling fire. Plus the food tasted great, better than in any restaurant Ingrid knew.

  “This is good,” she said, taking seconds of that rice, all buttery and nutty.

  “Thank you, miss,” said the maid. “I tell the cook.” She offered more to Chloe. Chloe shook her head, a brusque little shake, and the maid went back to the kitchen.

  How about mixing this tiny pool of orange sauce into the rice? Ingrid tried it. Not bad at all. Meanwhile Chloe was pushing bits of food around her plate, in fact hadn’t eaten much. Their eyes met.

  “So,” said Chloe, “how’s your grandfather?”

  “Which one?” Ingrid said. She had two. She didn’t see much of Mom’s father, Grandpa Bert, a retired accountant who lived in Florida with his girlfriend and played in several shuffleboard leagues. But then there was Grampy. Grampy lived on a farm across the river, the last farm left inside the boundaries of Echo Falls, although he didn’t do any farming anymore. Grampy had had it up to here with a lot of things, including farming, and his fields now lay fallow, all the animals gone.

  “The one with the farm, of course,” said Chloe.

  “Pretty good,” Ingrid said. Last time she’d seen him, he’d been standing on a monster woodpile he’d chopped for the winter, the wind whipping at his thick white hair.

  “How old is he?” Chloe asked.

  “Seventy-eight.”

  “And he lives alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  Chloe dabbed at the corners of her lips with her napkin; even the napkins were beautiful, thick and creamy. Ingrid had the crazy idea of stealing one. She’d never thought of stealing anything in her entire life.

  “Would you say you’re close to him?” Chloe said.

  Ingrid, her mind still on this revelation of the depths of her own depravity, didn’t follow. “Who?” she said.

  Chloe’s lips pinched together, which should have made her look a little less spectacular but didn’t.

  Oh, she meant Grampy. “I guess you could say we’re close,” Ingrid said. “The thing with Grampy—”

  The kitchen door opened. Not the maid this time, but an old man. He wasn’t a Grampy-type old man with muscles and ramrod posture. This old man was bent and creaky. He carried two birch logs.

  “I bet Carl knows your grandfather,” Chloe said.

  Carl—had to be Carl Kraken Senior—turned to them. He had a beaky nose, a pointy chin, big flat ears with lots of sprouting hairs.

  “Carl,” said Chloe, “do you know—what’s your grandfather’s name, Ingrid?”

  She had to think for a second, she was so used to just that simple Grampy. “Aylmer Hill.”

  Carl Senior’s eyes—beady, if that meant the size of really little beads—homed in on Ingrid and got smaller still. His hand went to his nose, which was bent to one side as well as beaky. “Nuh,” he said. He tossed the logs on the fire, jabbed at them with the poker as though trying to inflict pain, then left the room.

  “Guess not,” said Chloe.

  “Tell me about all these Carls,” Ingrid said.

  “What’s lower—moron or cretin?” said Chloe. She dipped a finger in her water glass, stirred the ice cubes. “An actual farm inside Echo Falls,” she said. Long pause.

  “Yeah, the last one,” said Ingrid, feeling a little proud of the fact for the first time.

  “Don’t you think that’s weird?” Chloe said.

  “How?” said Ingrid.

  The ice cubes swirled around, faster and faster. “It’s the twenty-first century, Ingrid,” Chloe said.

  “There still have to be farms,” Ingrid said.

  “In cities?” said Chloe.

  “Echo Falls isn’t a city.”

  “Not yet,” said Chloe. “What do you think his plans are?”

  “Plans?”

  “For the farm,” Chloe said, her tone sharpening.

  “I don’t know,” said Ingrid. How Grampy supported himself now that he no longer worked the farm was a family mystery. One thing was sure: He didn’t want anyone messing with the farm. Mom and Dad had found that out when they’d tried to get Grampy interested in building condos on the hill behind the old tractor shed. Come to think of it, wasn’t the Ferrand Group part of that deal? Ingrid lifted her gaze from that ice cube whirlpool, a bit mesmerizing, and saw Chloe’s eye
s, the irises glinting with golden flecks, watching her, nothing friendly about that look at all. A strange physical sensation swept over her, chilling the backs of her neck and shoulders, heating up her face. Even without really understanding what was going on, she felt like a fool. This little playdate wasn’t about friendship.

  “Am I being nosy?” Chloe said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “Help what?” said Ingrid. “How?”

  “Everything changes,” Chloe said. “Even this stupid town.”

  Ingrid didn’t think Echo Falls was stupid at all. “What do you mean?” she said. Her tone sharpened too.

  The maid came in, bearing an amazing-looking dessert, a sort of pyramid of glistening round things topped with chocolate, completely unfamiliar to Ingrid. “Pro-feeta-rolls?” she said, or something like that, some foreign word Ingrid had no idea how to spell.

  Chloe waved her away. “Maybe later,” she said. The maid backed into the kitchen. “Let’s go up to my room,” Chloe said.

  Ingrid didn’t want to go up to Chloe’s room. She wanted to go home. But—she was curious. If this wasn’t about rekindling friendship, then what was the purpose, exactly?

  Chloe led Ingrid up a broad curving staircase that reminded her of old black-and-white movies. From above came voices.

  “Why don’t you simply fire him now?” said a woman.

  “Just let me handle this,” a man replied. “For once.”

  “You handle this?” said the woman. “That defines oxymoron.”

  Oxymoron: there it was, the word for contradictions in terms, like giant midget. Life could be so weird sometimes—for example, this quest or whatever you wanted to call it for the oxymoron definition leading to the whole MathFest disaster, and now comes this ghost answer from these bodiless voices.

  A woman appeared at the top of the stairs. Ingrid hadn’t seen her in years, but it was Mrs. Ferrand, no doubt about that. Mom was really pretty, Julia LeCaine was striking, but Mrs. Ferrand? She was something else, with that platinum blond hair, worn up now with a comb—a diamond-studded comb?—features like something carved by a genius ice sculptor, flawless pearly shoulders, a tight floor-length silver gown, silver shoes with diamond bows. Mr. Ferrand, in a tuxedo, came up behind her. They started down the stairs, meeting the girls about halfway.

  “Have you had dinner, Chloe?” said Mrs. Ferrand.

  “Yes.”

  “Your father and I are going out.”

  “Have fun,” said Chloe.

  “It’s not that kind of evening,” said Mrs. Ferrand. She glanced at Ingrid.

  “You remember Ingrid?” said Mr. Ferrand.

  “Certainly,” said Mrs. Ferrand, showing no sign of recognition at all. She smelled incredible.

  “Dinner was great,” said Ingrid, holding out her hand.

  “Really?” said Mrs. Ferrand. After a slight pause, she noticed Ingrid’s hand sticking out there and shook it, very briefly, her own hand surprisingly hot.

  “My room’s this way,” Chloe said.

  Chloe’s room was actually a suite, with a sitting room about the size of the living room at 99 Maple Lane, a sleeping area with a king-size bed up a few steps, and off that a bathroom with a gigantic shower that converted to a sauna.

  “Where’s Mister Bumpy?” Ingrid said.

  “Mister Bumpy?”

  “The teddy bear.”

  “Oh that,” said Chloe. “Long gone.”

  A door from the bathroom opened onto a private deck with a hot tub, overlooking all those sloping lawns to the river. It was night now, a few lights shining in some of the Ferrands’ outbuildings, Prescott Hall a dark shape across the river.

  “Been to Rome?” Chloe said.

  Rome. Of all the cities in the world, Rome was the one she wanted most to see. “No,” said Ingrid. “You?”

  “A few times,” Chloe said.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Maybe you can see for yourself,” said Chloe.

  “Someday,” said Ingrid. She had a vague idea that in college there was something called junior year abroad.

  “How does spring break sound?” said Chloe.

  “Huh?”

  “Still a little on the cold side, I know,” said Chloe, “but you know what that means.”

  “What?” said Ingrid. She was getting pretty confused.

  Chloe did that pinched-lip thing again. “No tourists, of course.”

  “Oh,” said Ingrid. Tourists, uncool. But also uncool not to travel. How did that work?

  The windows of the most distant outbuilding went dark. The wind came up, stirring bare branches, rattling dead leaves across the stone terrace below.

  “Do you get what I’m talking about?” Chloe said.

  “You’re inviting me on a trip to Rome?”

  “All expenses paid. In return, you’ve got to help your grandfather.”

  “How?” Grampy didn’t need help from anybody; nothing was clearer than that.

  “Just by explaining the situation,” Chloe said.

  “What’s the situation?”

  “Are you listening?”

  Ingrid felt that chill again. “I’m listening,” she said.

  “One, that farm’s never going to be worth more than it is right now,” Chloe said. “Two, how long can this Grampy character take care of it? Three, here’s his last chance to do the right thing for his family. Four, you’re closest to him.”

  “Who told you that?” Ingrid said. In fact, how did Chloe know any of this stuff? The one two three four thing—where did that come from? Ingrid gazed up at her. Chloe was a lot taller, way better-looking, of course, a straight-A student at C.C.D., where things were a lot harder than at Ferrand Middle; plus she seemed so much older. Ingrid started getting mad. “He’s not a character,” she said.

  “So sorry,” said Chloe. “But do you get it now?”

  “What’s to get?” said Ingrid. “You want me to talk him into selling the farm.”

  A slight nod.

  “So the Ferrand Group can get even richer,” Ingrid said.

  “Where does your father work again?” said Chloe.

  Ingrid was silent.

  “But it’s not just for us,” Chloe said. “It’s for the good of the whole town.”

  “The good of the whole town?”

  “There are plans for Echo Falls.”

  “What kind of plans?”

  Chloe sighed. “Have you been anywhere at all, Ingrid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know—New York, maybe?”

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid. “I’ve been to New York.” Twice—once with Mom to see The Producers, once with the whole family to do the Empire State Building/Statue of Liberty thing, but she’d been only three or four that time and didn’t remember.

  “Then you know that Echo Falls is a pissant little place,” Chloe said.

  “Not to me,” said Ingrid.

  Chloe sighed again. “Let’s not argue,” she said. “But how can it hurt for you to have a little talk, ask him to at least listen to the offer. Maybe explain the fun of retirement to Florida.”

  Ingrid laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Chloe said.

  “Grampy in Florida.”

  “Arizona, then. But how can it hurt?”

  Headlights appeared far down the gravel road that wound by the outbuildings, came closer. When they neared the house, powerful outdoor lights flashed on, lit the car: the dinged-up Firebird. Sean Rubino was behind the wheel, his head bobbing along to whatever was playing on his sound system. The Firebird went by the house, and the outdoor lights blinked off.

  “How?” said Chloe. Her voice got quiet, almost inaudible. “How, for God’s sake?” Then something very surprising, almost shocking, happened. Those golden eyes filled up, overflowed. Chloe didn’t make a sound; tears ran down her face in silence.

  Ingrid backed away. She didn’t like the Ferrands, didn’t like Chloe, didn’t even like Chloe’s roo
m. But just asking Grampy to listen to the offer—she didn’t see how that could hurt.

  “All right,” she said.

  seven

  “PHONE.”

  Whiz.

  Thump.

  Ingrid opened her eyes in time to see Ty leaving the room, wearing boxers and his Red Raider T-shirt. BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER.

  The phone lay on her pillow. She picked it up.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Did I wake you?” said Mia.

  Ingrid cleared her throat. “Have to get up pretty damn early to do that,” she said.

  “A quarter to eleven early enough?” said Mia.

  Ingrid glanced at the clock: 10:46. And out the window: drizzle, wind, charcoal sky. A dismal day. She remembered MathFest. Math, Monday, first period: monster looming in the very near future.

  “What happened at MathFest?” she said.

  “They forgot to call me,” said Mia. “They didn’t call Brucie either.”

  “Who?” said Ingrid. “What?”

  “Whoever called you,” said Mia.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you still asleep, Ingrid? Whoever called you to say MathFest was canceled.”

  “Canceled?” What was that line Mom sometimes quoted—“like to the lark at break of day arising”? Her heart lifted just like that. “MathFest was canceled?”

  Mia got it right away. “You slept in?”

  “Yup.”

  “What do you do to deserve this kind of luck?”

  “I’m pure in word and deed,” Ingrid said. “Canceled? Are you sure?”

  “Postponed till next Saturday,” said Mia.

  Ingrid bounced out of bed. Griddie—that was her cool nickname, unused by anyone but her—Griddie the good luck queen. “How come?” she said.

  “The high school was locked,” Mia said. “The janitor never showed up.”

  “Carl Junior?” said Ingrid. “Was that the name of the janitor?”

  “I didn’t stick around for the postmortem,” said Mia. “I was pretty tired, what with getting up at seven on a Saturday morning for no reason.”

  “Poor you,” said Ingrid.

  Mia used a bad word.

  Griddie the good luck queen went down to the kitchen. Dad, gulping coffee, was wearing his bright-green pants. That meant the Sandblasters were going out.