I couldn't believe him. He said it with such distinction – such assurance that that was what I was thinking and that was how it would be – and I couldn't place any of the thoughts skirting around my mind other than the one that was pounding at the forefront of my skull. He wanted me to stay just as I had wanted him to stay after my mother's accident, and just as Karl had stayed so unwaveringly and without complaint for all of those months. And it was clear to me in that moment, at last, which one of them I was more like, because I had wondered all of that time what I would have done if I had been given the choice, and if my decisions hadn't been dictated by the two of them but free of will instead, and the answer neither placated nor disturbed me, but rather sat in my chest like a lead weight where the organ beneath the ribs ought to have been beating.
“You want me to stay,” I repeated, my voice flat and emotionless. I looked at him oddly, my head bent slightly to the side. “Is Melinda staying?”
My father looked taken aback.
“Melinda? What do you mean? Of course she's staying – she's taken off work to have more time here.”
“Is she?” I nodded, a sudden feeling of calm trickling down my spine. “She's staying even when there's no hope of recovery? Funny, I guess she's a better person than you, then.”
My father looked stunned. As he stared at me in incomprehension, the lines of his face melded downwards like rivers diverging into the sea, and every solid, collected characteristic was lost from him without chance of return.
“Enim,” he said, “it's not like that.”
“No?” I gave him a look of feigned intrigue, willing him to explain the answer that wasn't true. “It's different because you got cancer instead of a mental illness? Your pain – your death – is more deserving of pity than Mom's ever was?”
“Please don't make this about your mother; don't make it into an argument.”
“It's not an argument – it's not even a decision worth discussing,” I said. “You're asking me to stay with you after you traipsed around the world while I was stuck in that house with her – in the state that she was in – for more than a year?”
“You were in Bickerby for most of it,” he countered. “You didn't stay with her for an exorbitant amount of –”
“It was a lifetime!” I said, my voice raising and cracking against the walls. “It was more than that! It was everything – every bit of time that I ever had got sucked into it –”
“Please don't get upset, Enim. I know that this is difficult, and I didn't want it to go this way.”
He was looking at me pleadingly, but there was nothing that I could give to him anymore. He had always wanted things from me that I had never been able to produce, and had always asked for things that I couldn't do, and it was finally clear that no matter how much or how well I feigned the responses, they would never be anything more real or tangible than the music that floated to me from afar or the figments of imaginary people that had come to me at my lowest moments.
“I'm going to visit Jack tomorrow,” I said, my voice calm despite the shaking of my form. “I won't be back for a few weeks, at least. I'm sorry that you're sick, and I'm sorry that you'll suffer, but I won't be coming back to see you, and you can die alone, without your family, just like Mom did.”
His expression sunk, hollowed out the way my insides had done, and he shut his eyes as the words filled the room.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
I moved to the office door and put my hand on the handle, prepared to wrench it open and leave the house and never return again. As I twisted the knob, though, he spoke again and halted me for just a moment more.
“Enim –”
I paused, shoulders still raised and stiff, but I didn't turn back to face him.
“Enim, will you … will you tell Karl for me?” His voice had gone very low, and I was certain that if I could see his face, it would have been broken and threatening to disintegrate into pieces all over the floor, messying the office further. “I … We're still not speaking, and I … I need him to know.”
I hesitated.
“I'll tell him,” I said shortly, and then pulled open the door and strolled down to the living room where Ava was still playing with the dog. As I entered, Melinda looked up from the chair in the corner and noted my expression, but I walked past her and stooped down to collected Mea without giving her any indication of how the conversation with my father had gone.
“Did you have a good time?”
Karl's voice came out of nowhere as I opened the car door and sat down. Taking my time buckling my seat belt and arranging Mea on my lap, I gave a careful nod.
“What did he want to talk about?” he said, putting the car in reverse and slowly backing out of the driveway.
I could see the outline of my father in the window to the leftmost side of the house. His form was just a blackened shape against the yellow, but he was every bit as recognizable with his tall stance and broad shoulders. Licking my lips, I noted how heavily my breaths were coming and sought to slow them before speaking again, unwilling to give myself away.
Because if there was one thing that I could be certain of, it was that if Karl knew that my father was ill then he wouldn't hesitate to aid him in any way. He would be vigilant in his care, throwing out every argument and disagreement that they had had over the past several years and allowing himself to be sucked back into the role of a caregiver solely to give himself some peace of mind. And he would devote himself to the cause with such resoluteness that it would confirm that that was and would always be his only purpose, and I wouldn't watch him give himself away to take care of another family member only to receive nothingness in return. He couldn't do that – not for my father, who wouldn't have done the same for him, and not for me, either, who had been taking advantage of his willingness to take care of someone for far too long.
“He just wanted to give me advice about what I should be doing,” I started, “but it was nothing important.”
Ch. 4
The drive up to Kipling was even longer than the one to Bickerby, and though it was made better by the fact that it was not along the coast and that Karl and I no longer spent the time arguing, I felt every bit as hollow as I had on those drives, as well. As we finally passed the sign welcoming us to the small town, I squinted at the population number that was printed on the wood and wondered if one of the digits had somehow fallen off.
“Are you sure that you don't want me to come back tomorrow?” Karl asked, his eyes skirting around the town as he slowed the car.
The place was far smaller than I had imagined. There was one main road that led into the downtown and continued up a ways to a hill that appeared to mark where it ended, and the buildings were so quaint and snow-covered that it felt as though we were trapped in the inside of a snow-globe. Off in the distance I could just make out the church where Jack had said that he would be, but it was so white that it nearly disappeared against the backdrop.
“No, I'll call you when I'm ready to come back,” I said.
“So you and Jack are just planning to ...” Karl trailed off without completing the thought, his eyes still traveling around the area as he wondered what anyone could possibly be doing in such a place. “... catch up?”
“Yep.”
He slowed to a stop and looked over at me. Snow was coming down all around us, and the sky was white and sunless behind him. As he continued to gaze at me, I got the distinct feeling that he knew that there was something that I wasn't telling him, and whether it was that Jack was expecting me to follow him into another of his conspiracies or that my father had wanted me to tell him about his poor health, I was resigned to give nothing away.
“And you're sure that you'll be fine watching the dog on your own?” he said, looking down at where Mea was perched on my lap.
“Yeah, we'll be good.”
“But you've only had her for a week,” Karl said. “It might be difficult for you – and I wouldn't mind watching her if you think that it'll be too mu
ch.”
I shook my head again, reeling to go before he got any more anxious or suspicious.
“We'll be fine. And if I have any trouble, Jack can help me. He's had pets before.”
Karl made a face.
“All of Jack's 'pets' seem to meet unfortunate fates,” he murmured, but unlocked the door and reminded me to call him before allowing me go.
I wandered through the town with Mea pattering along beside me. Having never known the world any differently, she was far more accustomed to the snow than I was and didn't mind that her paws submerged down into it to chill them, and the sound of them sinking and lifting from it filled the air with a speckling of noise.
From what I could see of the town through the snow that was falling into my eyes, it looked like one of the little model towns that came with the wooden train-sets that I had played with when I was younger: the Colonial houses with their little picket fences, the old-fashioned stores with hand-carved signs, and the stretches of trees that were undoubtedly full and brightly colored enough in fall to warrant tourists coming all the way there just to take pictures of the gradient of hues. It was the type of town that I expected to see when I flipped through a magazine advertising hideaways in New England; it wasn't the type of town that I had ever thought Jack would choose to live in.
I set off in the direction of the church in the distance. It was a ways back from the town center and was separated by the local graveyard. As I reach the fence that enclosed it, I peered through the gate to see if there was another way up to it, but the only other option appeared to be circling the entirety of the town. I looked down at Mea and made a face, wondering if it was worth walking through the cold to avoid the misery of the tombstones. She wagged her tail accordingly.
The bolt of the gate had buckled, and the chain wrapped about the doors in its place gave just enough allowance to permit it to open eight inches or so. It caught a bit on the frozen ground as I pushed my weight against it and scraped along the ice with a horrible cutting noise that rang throughout the open area, and I threw a last glance down at Mea before slipping through the opening.
The idea that Karl had so willingly agreed to drive me the four and a half hours to the town was a birthday present in itself, or simply a testament to the fact that I had finally managed to do something right by falling into remission after returning home with him. The thought that he had not forced me back into treatment, nor insisted that I take my medication, and had gone so far as to handle the legal work for what had happened on Bardom Island and help Jack get the lowest punishment possible for evading arrest only made the guilt stirring in my chest expand a bit, and I sucked in a breath of cold air to stifle the feeling.
I took another look around the cemetery before starting off down the clearing that I assumed was the path beneath the thick snow. Kipling, though on the other side of the state, was apparently just as prone to terrible winters as Bardom Island had ever been. I pulled my jacket further about me and ducked my head down as a gust of wind skirted through the headstones towards me, still vaguely wondering if it had been the right decision to come at all. Even though the apartment had grown smaller since the conversation with my father the night before and the apathy that had set in around me seemed to tighten my muscles and threaten to hold me in place forever, it still didn't feel right to be away. But I couldn't go back now, I reminded myself. And I wouldn't.
A life-sized statue of an angel was situated in the middle of the route that I had been taking, and with my head bent so low to keep the chill from my face, I nearly ran into it before realizing that it was there. Halting myself just before my toes collided with the base, I squinted at the letters etched on the stone, but it had been so long since I had studied Latin that I couldn't decipher what it said. Stepping back to go around it, I momentarily craned my neck to look up at it. It was a rather gruesome statue, I thought. The angel was hunched and the tips of the wings were broken off, and though the face and hair was round and soft, the body was heavy and it was impossible to tell if it was male or female. One of the hands was made to reach outwards as though inviting passersby to climb up and join it on its pedestal, but the eyes were so blank and white that it was all too easy to back away. I quickly turned and circled around it to continue down the path after Mea, but gave it one last glance before exiting the cemetery into the churchyard.
As a part of his community service, Jack had been placed with a program that was run through the local church. As difficult as it was to imagine Jack actually doing what he was told, it was even more so to imagine him in a place of worship. Or, rather, it was difficult to imagine him being allowed in a place of worship. I paused outside the back door and looked up at the slightly-chipped exterior walls and the bell trapped in its tower above, wondering if he had called me there because he had gotten into trouble and needed me to convince Karl to get him out of it. The vague image of him lighting something on fire in the church pews in supposed-sacrifice came to my mind, but I shook it away and started up the steps.
The back of the church led to a small wooden room with a lone staircase leading up to the ground floor and a hallway that branched off to a few more rooms. After a moment of looking around, I took the staircase and found myself at the door to the chancel. The interior of the place was generally how I had expected it to be, with stone floors and wooden pews that ran up to the front where stained-glass decorated the windows behind the altar and a font at the main entrance where holy water was kept. Seeing that Jack was nowhere in sight, I quickly backed down the stairs and returned to the long hallway below.
Mea had run down before me and skirted off in another direction, and when I reached the bottom step she was nowhere in sight. I hesitated in the middle of the wooden floors without daring to check any of the rooms for where she had gone or where Jack might be, feeling more and more like an intruder with every moment that passed.
“Can I help you, son?”
I startled as the voice sounded off to my side and quickly turned around. A priest had come into the hallway and was standing under the arched doorway. He was looking at me in a gentle way that made me feel even more out of place, and I subconsciously took a step back.
“No, sorry. I was just – I'm in the wrong place.”
I wondered why Jack hadn't thought to meet me at the door. He knew as well as anyone that I was terrible with directions, and ought to have known how strange it was for me to be wandering around such a small town looking for him. It was clear that I wasn't a member of the scarce population, and more so that I had no place in the church.
“You're welcome to come in,” the priest said, stepping back and indicating to the stairs that led to the main room which I had just left. “Are you here for the funeral? It's not due to begin for a few hours, but you're welcome to sit down.”
I glanced behind him and quickly shook my head.
“No, that's … I'm not here for that. I'm not even Protestant.”
He smiled.
“Neither am I.”
“Right.” I pulled at my collar uncomfortably before looking at his, realizing that it was a Catholic church. “I mean, I'm … I was actually looking for someone.”
“Are you a friend of Jack's?”
I caught sight of Mea sniffing around in one of the rooms out of the corner of my eye and nodded, grateful, at least, that my presence wasn't entirely uncalled for.
“He's just upstairs; the staircase is at the far end of the hall.”
He indicated in the right direction and I nodded again, but didn't move from my spot.
“Right. Thanks.” I hesitated. Mea was pawing at the carpet runner as though hoping to see what was lying underneath. “Sorry – I'll put her on a leash.”
The priest peered over at her with another gentle smile.
“She's welcome here, too,” he said, and then returned upstairs to the main room.
When he had gone, I hurried forward and scooped Mea up before making my way to the end of the hall. The stair
case there was steep and rickety, and I carefully crept up it for fear that it might break beneath my feet. Once on the upper landing, I squinted through the poor light in search of where to go. The space was unpainted and dark, and there was only one door off to the right-hand side. Stepping over to it, I shifted Mea in my arms and knocked twice on the door.
“Nim.” Jack opened the door with his usual grin, which only grew wider at the sight of the dog in my arms. “Never thought I'd see the day.”
“That I actually returned to Maine, or that I'm holding a puppy?”
“The dog, definitely,” he remarked. “I knew you'd come up here. It was just a matter of convincing you.”
He stepped back to let me into the room, which was small and dark like the hallway. There was a cot made up in one corner and a table with a small refrigerator resting atop it that took up the majority of the space, and – just as his room at Bickerby had always been – it was a mess.
“So this is where you live.”
I stooped to let Mea down and she immediately ran over to a bundle of clothing and buried herself beneath it, re-emerging a moment later with an empty box of cigarettes between her teeth. As she hopped up onto the cot to chew through the paper, Jack shut the door behind me and tilted his head at her.
“So'd you name her, or can I do the honors?”
“Her name's Mea.”
“May-ah?” he repeated, giving the dog a frown. “Is that Latin, Nim? That's just cruel.”
“What would you have named her, then?” I asked, moving aside so that he could cross the room to pet her. “Cantaloupe?”
“Don't be ridiculous. She looks much more like a carnival squash.”
“That name rolls off the tongue.”
He grinned.
“Mea's fine,” he said, sliding his hand along her head and ruffling the fur. “What's it mean? And don't tell me 'dog.'”
“It doesn't,” I said, but didn't give the proper translation, either. Wedging myself through the area, I took a seat at the lone chair by the table and looked over at him. “So what's this whole mystery about?”
When I Am Laid in Earth (Damnatio Memoriae Book 3) Page 5