“Tig. Head back down to University and keep going east. Thanks. I so did not want to walk.”
“No problem.” OK, she got it now. It had just taken her a moment. Tig, short for Tigger? Or perhaps signifying nothing at all.
A light, sleety snow was falling. “Oh, excellent,” Tig said, drawling with sarcasm. “More snow.” She wore a green army jacket and a gray hoodie sweatshirt underneath. Camo pants and those ugly boots. She was slim and small, with dark hair cut short across her forehead, and buzzed on the sides. A girl’s voice, a little on the husky side. At least Grace had figured the age right. Sixteen or seventeen. Really, too young to be hanging out at the neighborhood bad-vibes place. Probably a not-good story in there somewhere.
“You’re Mike’s sister?”
“That’s right.” Grace waited a beat. “You know where he is?”
“No.”
Of course not. He had dematerialized. Then Tig said, “OK, look, since you’re helping me out. His name’s like a swear word around there. I think he owes some of those dudes a lot of money.”
He probably did. Oh goddamn. It was so stupid and predictable. Money for drugs, her father said. He wasn’t always wrong. Tig said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“That’s all right.”
“It’s not like I know for sure. It’s something Heather was talking about.”
“Heather,” Grace repeated, trying to concentrate on her driving. The snow was freezing as it fell, and the road surface was treacherous.
“My girlfriend.”
Grace was careful to look straight ahead. “So who’s Kenny?”
“Ah, she doesn’t know what she wants.” Tig’s foot took a swing and connected with the dashboard. She took her feet down and sat up straighter.
They were both quiet then. The wind had picked up and was sending a fine, icy layer of snow skittering across the road. Grace slowed the car so that they only crept along. Tig said, “Turn left at the next light.”
“Where is it we’re going, exactly?”
“My place. Well, my parents’ place. As they like to remind me.”
“They worry about you being out this late?”
“No.”
“Nice neighborhood,” Grace said, because it was, one of the brick street blocks, with the old-fashioned globe streetlights that shone dim and misty in the snow. The houses were solid dark sleeping shapes.
“I guess it’s fine,” Tig said. “If you’re like, into total seclusion. It’s only a couple more blocks, you can let me off.”
“No, I’ll take you all the way.” The windshield wipers were dragging, piling up ice. Grace made herself focus on the steering and braking. She thought she knew now where Michael was.
“I liked him. Mike,” Tig said unexpectedly. “The times I talked to him. So maybe he’s a little screwed up. . . .”
“Why do you say that?” Grace immediately regretted asking. There were things she might not want to hear.
“Sorry. He’s your brother.”
“No, really, tell me.”
“All that bad-boy rock-and-roll stuff, you know, the devil teaches you how to play the guitar? And all the drugs? You better respect them or they peel your brain like a banana. Anyway. It doesn’t seem like that’s really him, you know? It’s like, he puts on a Halloween costume and scares himself.”
“Maybe that’s right.” It seemed entirely right.
“He’s another one who doesn’t know what he wants.”
“Not like you,” Grace said, liking the girl in spite of herself.
“That’s right. That’s why I’m going to be just fine. No matter what anybody else says.”
Tig got out at a house on the corner, a tidy redbrick with a colonnade of white pillars. At the front door she raised a hand in a jaunty salute. Grace watched her until she got inside. If she accomplished nothing else tonight, at least she’d gotten Tig home safely.
The snow had stopped and the streets had a shell-shocked look. Her grandmother’s house wasn’t far away. Grace drove past it once, circled the block, and came back to it. There were no lights and there was nothing to see. A good place for total seclusion. By now the realtor’s sign looked like a bad joke, as if they were attempting to sell a haunted house. Grace slowed at the drive, turned in, and promptly slid into the curb. She killed the engine and left the car where it was.
The snow cover reflected frozen light. The house itself was entirely dark. The realtor’s bulky key box was hooked over the doorknob. She rang the doorbell and heard the faraway, underground sound of the chimes. She rang again, waited, then used her key to wrestle the locks and push the door open.
She hung back on the porch and called into the dark hallway. “Is anybody here?”
Nothing. Her voice echoed back to her.
“Michael?”
The hallway was a pool of darkness. She could make out the white banisters of the stairs. She listened. Nothing.
Or maybe something. A distant, skittery sound. She found her phone in her purse. As if anyone on the other end of a phone could help her. She didn’t feel brave, only stupid, slow-brained from cold and fatigue. “If you’re here, come out. I’m not going in there.”
She waited. More of the skittery noise. Footsteps. A light went on in the hallway overhead. She heard Michael at the top of the stairs, calling down. “You alone?”
“Yes.”
He descended halfway, slowly, one step at a time. He was barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a black T-shirt. “What are you doing here?” His voice was hoarse.
“No, what are you doing here?”
He sat down on the stairs. “What time is it?”
“Late. Almost two. Hey.”
He was having trouble holding his head up. It sagged between his knees. “Are you going to be sick?”
He shook his head. Grace advanced into the hallway and shut the door behind her. “What are you doing here, this is dumb. Are you listening to me? Are you high? Huh?”
“Leave me alone.” He coughed and spit something to one side.
“No. Get your shoes. You have shoes, right? And a coat?” He didn’t move or look up. “Michael, you can’t stay here. What?” He was talking, but to himself. “I can’t hear you.”
“I can’t stay anywhere.”
“Come home with me and we’ll sort it all out in the morning.”
“This is it for me.”
“What? What are you talking about? Do you need to go to the ER? Did you take something?” His head wobbled. He was shaking it no. “Then let’s go.”
“Are you going to call the police?”
“I’m not going to call the police.” She wondered if she’d have to. “What’s the matter?”
“You think you can fix it but you can’t.”
“Fix what?”
“Me.”
Grace sighed, as if he was only being obstinate, and it was only a matter of using more patience and persuasion to budge him. She was trying to think things through. She shivered inside her coat. “Is the heat on?”
“The realtor keeps it pretty low.”
“Yeah, I guess they would.” That was a mistake. They should blast the heat in the old place, turn on all the lights. Make it look as if all the life hadn’t long gone out of it. “I guess you took Dad’s key.”
“He won’t miss it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. A few days. They should probably change realtors. Nobody’s even come around.”
“Well. Bad weather.” At least he seemed more awake now, less out of it. She wanted to keep talking, saying normal things. “They should move some furniture back in, what do they call it, stage the rooms.”
Michael looked around him as if there was something to see besides darkness. “Mom grew up here.”
“Yes.”
“It was Grandma and Grandpa’s house. You remember coming here when we were little kids? Mom used to make jam from the grapes in the arbor. Grandma
scared me. I don’t think she ever smiled.”
“I don’t think she had that much to smile about.”
“It’s an important place. It’s part of our memories. And now they want to sell it.”
“Well, nobody needs it, Michael. Nobody has the money to keep it up. Pay the taxes.”
“Yeah, I know. Nothing lasts, everything dies. Get over it.”
Oh God, now he was going to go down that track: loss, death, self-pity. How to get him off it?
Michael said, “I think about Mom a lot.”
“So do I,” Grace said, rather too quickly. “Little things, usually. How she kept a jar of Jergen’s hand cream by the sink. If I see it or smell it someplace, it brings her right back.”
“After a while, everybody stops remembering. I mean, the people who knew you, they’re dead too.”
“Come on.”
“Sorry. That’s how I feel.”
“You’re being maudlin. It’s a useless, silly way to think.”
“Well that’s me. Useless and silly. It’s all I got.”
It was the kind of talk that made her impatient. She wanted to tell him that it was all a bad mood, a bad spell, a bad habit, it would pass. But it had already gone on too long, and she didn’t know how to argue against the implacable force of his self-hatred. The house seemed to be getting colder by the minute. Yes, she could see her breath.
Grace said, “How much money do you owe people?”
He scowled. “Who says I owe anybody money?”
“Because it’s just money. It’s not the most complicated thing in the world. The cure for money problems is money, right?”
“How about you leave and forget you saw me. Seriously.”
“And who says we have to stay here? Live here? We can get out of this town, go someplace else. Anywhere in the world. Yes we can.” He was shaking his head. “You can get away from Dad for a while. You guys are toxic together.”
“Yeah, but he’s right about me, I’m a fuckup.”
“No, you just . . . don’t know what you want.”
“Yeah, whatever. Where is it we’re supposed to go, anyway?”
“Wherever you want. Anywhere.”
“Anywhere’s the same as nowhere.”
“Then pick a place.”
“You’re only talking about this to make me feel all shiny and hopeful.”
“I want to get out of here too. Yes I do.” She was thinking about Les Moore, and the person she was with him, and the person she was everywhere else, and how none of this made her happy. “Let me take care of you.”
“No.”
“You’re the only family I have left. Not Dad.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was the sad truth.
He was quiet and for a moment it seemed she might win out, that he might give himself over to her, allow himself to be taken in, comforted, understood. Then he said, “I guess there’s some happy-talk stuff I can’t believe in anymore.”
“Well anyway.” She had reached the end of what she had to say and she had lost. She kept on, not yet knowing how to stop. “You can at least come home with me. You can sleep on the couch, it has to be more comfortable than here.”
“I’ve got a bedroll.”
“Oh, a bedroll. Great.”
“Not tonight. It’s late, it’s cold, I have guitars and all kinds of shit here.”
“Tomorrow, then. I’ll come get you.”
“Not too early,” he said, and Grace said afternoon, around one. At least he was agreeing to this much. He came down the rest of the stairs to see her out, and she hugged him. He had a faintly grubby smell of unwashed hair, unwashed clothes.
“You’ll be all right here?”
“Sure. Careful driving.”
“When you’re the only fool on the road, it makes it easy.”
She stepped out onto the porch and motioned to him to shut the door, it was too cold to stand there barefoot, and he drew back inside.
She had failed him. She knew that, but she didn’t yet know how badly.
Grace went home and slept until almost noon. The local television news was all about the weather, the disruptions of travel, the closing of schools. Her brother wasn’t answering his phone. By now she hardly expected him to. She showered and dressed and set out again. The sun was out, trying to burn a hole in the cold. When she reached her grandparents’ house, it glittered with frost and the windows shone with reflected light.
As before, she let herself in with her key and called her brother’s name. When he didn’t answer, she climbed the stairs and looked through all the rooms. Her footsteps echoed. The house was empty. She knew it without looking further.
He’d gone and taken everything with him. The floors were bare and swept, and she couldn’t tell where he might have lain down to sleep.
* * *
Two nights later. Grace was asleep, or rather, since she had not been aware of being asleep, she was awake in the dark. Someone trying to get in. Or no, knocking, loud and insistent. “What?” Grace said in her sleep, and then again, speaking it. “What?”
She pulled a sweatshirt over her pajamas. Turned on a light in the kitchen but hung back from the door. “Michael?”
“Police,” someone said, a woman’s voice, and that was a strange enough thing that she opened it.
Two blue uniforms crowded the alcove that was her entryway. Grace stared at the woman officer. “Becky?”
“Hi Grace.”
“You’re a cop? Wow.”
They’d been in high school together. Grace hadn’t seen her since. Becky had the same small, round blue eyes and a face that looked like someone had used their thumbs to put it together. Except that now she was encrusted with cop gear: badge, belt, shoulder mic, something that was probably Mace, and a holster with a real-looking gun sticking out of it. It was like seeing somebody you knew on television.
“This town,” Grace said. “People keep turning up. Wow.” She was awake, but her brain hadn’t yet caught up with her body. Becky had been one of those quiet, phlegmatic girls who took up space in classes and lunch hours and study halls. She and Grace had not been friends, especially, but once, in a restroom, Becky had provided Grace with a tampon when she needed one. Becky had a musclehead older brother who lifted weights and got his girlfriend pregnant. Useless bits of memory, surfacing.
The other cop was a man, older, bigger, more obviously cop-like, who managed to stare at Grace without ever actually looking in her direction. She was wearing particularly embarrassing pajamas, pink flannel with a pattern of kittens chasing butterflies.
“Could we come in?” Becky Who Was Now A Cop asked, and an alert, an alarm, went off in Grace’s brain, something she needed to pay attention to, but what? “Sure,” Grace said.
She stepped aside and they trooped in, crowding around the door, though there wasn’t enough room for the three of them. Grace turned on the overhead light. They didn’t seem to want to sit, and she wasn’t sure if you were meant to invite them. “So how long have you been a cop?” she asked Becky. She couldn’t think what else to say.
“Couple of years. I went into the army after school, I was an MP.”
“You must like it, huh?”
“I do. It makes you feel like you’re giving back.”
“Sure.” Grace wondered what she’d done, if they would get around to telling her. She had a little pot in the nightstand. Did anybody care about that these days? The worrying part of her brain was awake now.
She and Becky spoke at the same time.
“There was a—”
“What—”
“An incident.”
“What’s an incident?”
“At your father’s residence. Involving firearms.”
She must have blanked out then, or fallen asleep on her feet, because Becky had a hold of her arm. “Steady there.”
They steered her to the couch in the living room and sat her down. “I’m so sorry,” Becky said. The other cop took up a lot of space. His b
ig stomach was level with Grace’s eyes. She shook her head to try and clear it. “What?”
“Your father gave us a statement.”
“So he’s all right.”
“He’s in custody.”
She’d reached the end of her understanding and only stared.
“There was a confrontation. An argument. Between your father and your brother, Michael. Your father produced a weapon and shot him. I’m so sorry, Grace. He didn’t survive. He was gone by the time we got there.”
* * *
She was asked when was the last time she’d seen her brother. She said that she hadn’t known it was going to be the last time.
* * *
The only place she would see her father ever again would be in a courtroom.
* * *
People wanted to help. And they did. Her friends sat with her and cried with her and said the right things, which sometimes was to say nothing at all. They kept track of her and fed her as she moved through the following days and weeks as if she were made of glass. But no one thought to prevent her, the morning after her brother’s death, from walking behind the house to the place where he had fallen and seeing the bright shock of his blood in the snow.
* * *
The father admitted that he had been drinking. He didn’t know how much. He didn’t know what that meant, “impaired.” Was that really the most important thing here? After everything that had happened? My God. He had been drinking, let it go at that. He was doing his best to explain. His account was composed of things he remembered and things he thought he remembered, how one thing might have led to another. He had been afraid for his safety. He had only meant to scare his son. He had meant to teach him a lesson. All of these.
He and his son had a difficult relationship. This was no secret. His son had a history of substance abuse. This too was well-known. Things between them had only grown worse since the death of his wife. She was the boy’s mother, so of course she had stuck up for him. Smoothed things over. Let him get away with things. Allowances were made for him because he was talented. And he was, a talented musician. When he was a kid they’d paid for lessons, encouraged him. He was a natural. Keyboards and guitar, mostly, though he could play his way around a banjo and a mandolin too. Times he’d be practicing and everybody in the house would stop what they were doing to listen.
A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl Page 28