Still Life With Shape-Shifter

by Sharon Shinn

  “Dante, it’s Ann’s sister, Melanie,” Maria tells him.

  He nods. “Hey.”

  Probably not the easiest guy in the world to make conversation with. All I can think to say is, “We brought gelato. Is there room in the freezer?”

  William sidles out from some interior room. I’m glad to see that he moves as soundlessly here as he does in my house. That means he doesn’t consider my house hostile territory; stealth is just his standard mode of operation. I’m surprised when he takes the baby from Maria because he doesn’t seem like the type to fawn over children, but he seems perfectly at ease with her in his arms. For her part, Lizzie chortles and grabs at his hair. If she’s not afraid of her scary uncles, this little girl isn’t going to be afraid of anything.

  “Is she ready for a nap?” he asks Maria.

  “I wish. No, she wants to stay awake and visit with our guests during the meal and throw food on the floor and scream if I don’t give her more applesauce and otherwise make Melanie pray she never has a baby.”

  “How old is she?” I ask, because I can never tell.

  “Almost ten months. Just about to start walking. Life will never be the same.”

  Ann has gone over to stand by William and flirt with Lizzie, tapping her on the nose, the chin, her left ear, making the little girl scream with laughter. Something about the baby’s expression, and the shape of her eyes, reminds me of William; I’m guessing her dead mother shared a family resemblance with her brothers.

  I vaguely remember Ann’s telling me that the baby hasn’t shifted shapes yet, so I don’t make the inquiry though I’m curious. On the other hand, it seems like a rude question to ask of people you hardly know. So I say, “She’s beautiful.”

  “I think so, too,” Maria replies. “And since she’s not mine by blood, I can say that without sounding conceited.”

  Dante speaks up from the kitchen. “We’re all ready here, once everyone knows what they want to drink,” he says. “Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  The meal isn’t quite as uncomfortable as it could have been though neither William nor Dante says much, and I still find Dante unnerving. But Ann has always been a talker, and Maria is clearly aware of how bizarre the whole situation is, how unusual her menfolk appear to be, so she makes a great effort to engage me in conversation. We mostly discuss trivialities, our jobs, funny things Lizzie has done, how cold and wet March has been, but maybe April will be better. So it’s no worse than your average conversation with a total stranger on an airplane, but it’s not exactly relaxed, either.

  As predicted, Lizzie is restless and vocal, and three times she starts to cry, then cheers up again when Dante or Maria gives her a morsel of food from one of their plates.

  “She ought to fall asleep pretty soon, but I think she’ll start screaming if I just try to put her to bed,” Maria says. “Melanie, are you up for a walk in the park? We’ll make the guys clean up the mess.”

  I notice that Ann isn’t included in the invitation, and I figure this is no accident. “That sounds great,” I say. “It’s been such a beautiful day.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Maria is pushing a stroller around a small oval sidewalk that encloses a deserted playground not far from her house. I’m walking beside her at a meandering pace. The sun’s still up, but not for long, and it’s no warmer than sixty degrees, so all three of us are wearing a couple of layers of sweaters and jackets. Lizzie is kicking her legs with great energy and expressing herself in meaningless words that she utters with conviction. I suspect she will be much more outgoing than either of her uncles.

  “Ann tells me this is William’s sister’s child,” I say. “But she didn’t tell me what happened to her mom.”

  “Christina,” Maria says on a sigh, then gives me a quick sideways glance. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll have to know you a lot better before I tell that story.”

  I put my hands up in a brief no-problem gesture. “Hey, I’m not particularly good at confiding secrets, either.”

  “So we’ll just have a policy where we aren’t offended at the questions that are asked—or the questions that aren’t answered.”

  I laugh. “We probably have a lot in common, though. Might be nice to have someone to confide in now and then.”

  “I just want to make sure I have this right. You and Ann are half sisters, correct? And you’re not—she’s the only—”

  “I’m not a shape-shifter,” I say, putting the words right out there. “Her mom was, and Ann is. But my father and me—no.” I pause for a beat, then go on. “I’ve always believed that learning the truth about Ann and Gwen is what made my father basically lose his mind. But for some reason I never found it hard to accept. Maybe because I was pretty young when Ann first started changing shapes. Maybe because there was nothing Ann could have done or been that would have made me give her up.”

  She glances at me again. “She tells me you’re essentially the one who raised her.”

  “Not for the first five years, but after that—yeah.”

  “Then maybe you have advice for me. Lizzie hasn’t changed shapes yet, but everyone expects that she will. And it’s something I have to be prepared for, in case it happens. But—what do I do? Never take her out in public? Never leave her with a babysitter? Never let her leave the house? That seems like a pretty hard life.”

  I think it over. “When Ann was little, she didn’t change shapes that often. Mostly at night, mostly when she was sleeping. I think she was about two and a half when she started turning into a dog during waking hours.”

  “A beautiful white husky with blue eyes,” Maria murmurs. “That’s what she looked like the first time I met her. She was so unearthly. I wondered if she wasn’t one of them. But I wasn’t sure until William brought her over this week.”

  “She’s beautiful now, but you should have seen that puppy,” I say. “Cutest creature ever. She just romped through the yard.”

  “And she could control her changing? Even that young?” Maria asks, getting back to the main point. “William’s always been able to shift at will, but Dante still has trouble with it—he says this irresistible pressure comes over him, and he can’t stop it.”

  “I guess everyone’s different,” I reply. “Ann has always seemed to have some control over it. At any rate, if we were going to some public place, like the grocery store or the library, I would just say to her, ‘You have to be good. You have to hold tight.’ Those were my code words, I guess, hold tight. Even when she was really little, she knew what they meant, and she never shifted when she shouldn’t have.” I give Maria a helpless look. “Maybe it’s like toilet training. You have to find the key that works for that kid.”

  “I keep trying to figure out what to do about the babysitter. I mean, I have a job, and it’s not like William and Dante can stay home with her all the time. But what if she changes shapes when she’s with the nanny? Do I warn her ahead of time—and make her think I’m a lunatic? She’ll call child services on me!”

  I think this over. “Gwen stayed home with Ann, so I never thought about it. Do you have a relative you can trust with the truth? Can you ask that person to be the nanny?”

  She gives the ghost of a laugh. “I haven’t told anyone in my family the truth yet. I mean, I’m sure they’ll freak out. Who wouldn’t?” She’s silent a moment. “But I’ve been thinking I should tell my mom. She’s not easily flustered or rocked off balance—she might be able to handle the news just fine. She lives over in Illinois, and I don’t know that she’d want to move down here just to watch the baby—but maybe. She’s crazy about Lizzie.”

  “Well, here’s my thought. You can keep a secret from your friends, you can keep a secret from your neighbors, you can keep it from your family, but you always need someone to confide in. At some point, it’s just going to be too heavy, you know? When I was fifteen, and everything was going to hell at our house, I told my best friend about Ann and Gwen and all of it. Best decision I ever made. T
here were times I couldn’t have made it through the day without knowing Debbie would understand.”

  She gives me a quick, worried smile. “It’s not just knowing who to trust, knowing who won’t betray you. It’s knowing who’s strong enough to bear up under the knowledge of something so—so impossible.”

  “That is the trick,” I agree.

  “I have told one person—just one—my best friend, and you’re right, it saved my life. But I feel so responsible for Lizzie. She’s this—this perfect entity, this absolutely blank slate. Anything I do could be the wrong thing, could twist her or hurt or even destroy her. Sometimes, I’m paralyzed by that knowledge.”

  “Well, I was too young to think that way when I was taking care of Ann,” I say. “I did know she was precious, and rare, and had to be protected at all costs. I knew I couldn’t let people find out about her. I knew I had to stand between her and the rest of the world.”

  Maria gives me another small, sympathetic smile. “That’s a hard way to live, though,” she says. “Sacrificing everything for someone else. I chose to love Dante, and I chose to adopt Lizzie, and I’ve built my world around them. But a sister—she’s a tangent. She’s a powerful connection, but she’s never going to be the core of your life.” She lifts one hand from the stroller to make a gesture of farewell. “I mean, one day she falls in love and moves away and starts her own life. One day Ann meets William and everything changes. If she’s all you care about, that leaves you pretty lonely.”

  I’m sure she doesn’t mean her words to be poisoned knives cutting patterns in my skin, but that’s certainly the effect they have. Maybe Ann has told her about Brody, maybe she’s just guessing that a woman my age might want to get married and have a family and lead a traditional life. In the past year, Ann has already slipped farther and farther away from me; it’s clear her relationship with William will not bring her any closer. On the one hand, I will need to find ways to fill my heart when she decamps from it; on the other hand, she will always remain a part of my life, and whoever shares it with me cannot be shocked and horrified at the great mystery that is my sister. All our previous words hover around my head, swirl in my memory. Who do you trust, who will not betray you, who can bear up under knowledge so impossible?

  I’m silent for so long that I’m afraid she’ll ask me one of those questions I cannot answer, but she’s distracted by leaning over the top of the stroller and trying to see the baby’s face. “I think Lizzie’s asleep,” she murmurs. “Life is good.”

  I manage to answer. “And when it’s not good, it’s certainly interesting.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ann falls asleep on the drive home and I almost can’t wake her up and get her in the house. I actually consider bringing out a blanket and pillow and leaving her in the car—no doubt she’s slept in worse places—but finally I manage to rouse her enough to support her into the house and back to her room. She collapses on the bed without a word and is instantly deep in slumber again.

  I stand in the doorway for a few minutes, watching her in the faint illumination from the night-light. What could be making her so tired? What have she and William been doing with their time? Is he, perhaps, a bad influence on her, leading her down destructive paths that sap her strength and put her at risk? And if he is, can I do anything about it?

  I putter around the house for the next two hours before seeking my own bed, but the questions circle in my mind so long and so insistently that it’s past two before I fall asleep. No surprise, then, that the clock says 10:15 when I finally open my eyes to find morning sunshine pouring in over the windowsill like floodwaters over a dam. With a stretch and a groan, I pull myself out of bed and note the quality of the stillness in the house. I figure Ann must have snuck out early; I hope she’s left a note to tell me when she’ll be back.

  But when I peer in her room, I find she’s still lying in the bed.

  For a moment, fear transmutes every bone in my body to ice. Sleeping? Comatose? Dead? I hurry to her side, see her chest faintly rise and fall even before my hand goes to her cheek, which is warm and flushed. At my touch, her eyelids flutter, and she murmurs something, then turns over on the mattress.

  Just sleeping then. My heart, which has stopped, stampedes back into action. I try to control my trembling as I tiptoe out of the room.

  Don’t panic. She’s just tired. Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.

  I find it hard to convince myself I’m telling the truth, but I take a shower and get dressed and make breakfast as if everything is normal.

  It’s close to noon before Ann stumbles out of her bedroom, yawning widely and still wearing her pajamas. “Wow, how long was I out?” she asks as she takes in the angle of the sun, then glances toward the clock in the kitchen. “What, like fifteen hours? That has to be a record.”

  “I was starting to get worried,” I say lightly.

  She waves a careless hand. “Just catching up. I love sleeping in a nice soft bed. Did you make breakfast? I’m starving.”

  * * *

  Over the meal—which is actually lunch—she remembers that she disapproves of my recent treatment of Brody. “You should call him and apologize,” she says.

  “I have nothing to apologize for.”

  “Well, sometimes you can be sorry even if you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I change the subject, telling her about some disaster at work, and I think she’s been sufficiently diverted. But while I’m loading the dishwasher, she lifts the cordless phone from the cradle and leans against the kitchen cabinet.

  “Which one of these recent calls is from Brody?” she asks.

  “What? Ann, put that down! Don’t call him!”

  She ignores me. “Debbie—Debbie—work—Debbie—eight hundred number, probably a junk call—oooh, and unknown caller in a 314 area code. Is that Brody?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Let’s try it.” I hear the beeps of the individual numbers being pressed, then the purr of the phone ringing at the other end, so I realize she’s put the call on speaker.

  “Hello?”

  “Brody!” Ann could not sound more delighted. “It’s Ann Landon! How’ve you been?”

  “Hey, Ann. Nice to hear your voice,” he says. “What’s going on?”

  “I was just standing here talking to Melanie and I wondered if you were busy. We could get pie or something. Just the two of us.”

  There’s a moment of silence. “Am I on speakerphone?” he says.

  She laughs. “How could you tell?”

  “Is Melanie in the room? Is she okay with you calling me?”

  “Who cares? I can make friends with anybody I want.”

  “Good in theory, but it doesn’t always work in practice,” he says.

  “So you don’t want to go get pie? It’s Sunday—that’s usually the blackberry special.”

  “I’d love to. But only if Melanie comes, and only if she wants to.”

  “Oh, if you and I go somewhere, you can bet Melanie will want to come along.”

  “Yeah, that’s not good enough,” he says. “I’m not blackmailing anybody into doing anything.”

  “Give me the phone,” I say to Ann, but she turns her back on me.

  “See, here’s the trick with Melanie,” she says. “You have to find out what she cares about, then you have to care about it, too.”

  “That’s the trick with anybody,” Brody tells her.

  “I mean, you can’t just pretend to care.”

  “Yeah. Right. Pretending never works. Authenticity all the way.”

  “Give me the phone,” I say again.

  “And you know, there’s only one thing Melanie really cares about.”

  “I know,” he says. “I knew that the day I met her.”

  “So that’s why you and I have to be friends.”

  “Works for me,” he says, “but I’m still not doing it behind her back.”

  I grab Ann’s wrist, hard enough to make her yelp, and forc
e the phone out of her fingers. I switch out of speaker mode before I put the handset to my ear.

  “Actually, you’re wrong. I’m ready to sell my sister to the highest bidder just to get her out of the house,” I say. “So you’d better think of something else that matters to me if you want to be friends.”

  “Well, hell, doesn’t that go both ways?” he says, as casually as if we’ve been speaking every day for the past week. “Don’t you have to find out what I’m interested in and figure out how to love it?”

  Only if I like you, only if I care about you, only if I want you in my life. I’m still not sure any of those things are true, but I’m beginning to suspect they are. “Yeah, I suppose so,” I say.

  “Then we’ve got a lot to talk about,” he says. “I can taste that blackberry special already. See you in about an hour.”

  * * *

  You’d think this little outing would be as tense and uncomfortable as dinner at Maria’s house the night before, but, strangely, it’s not. None of the credit goes to me. I’m not exactly sulking, but I’m not exactly playing talk-show hostess, either, trying to engage my guests in conversation and making sure everyone has a chance to speak.

  Ann and Brody don’t seem to need my assistance, though; they’re chatting with the ease of old friends. Maybe it has something to do with birth order, that youngest-child insouciance. They’ve never thought the world was so scary; there’s always been someone else around to take care of them, to keep them safe. I don’t know whether I should feel envious or resentful.

  “So Debbie told me something interesting the other day,” Brody says to Ann.

  “Really? What? Didn’t you just love Debbie and Charles?”

  “And the boys. They seemed like a great family.”

  “So what did Debbie tell you?”

  He gestures in my direction with his fork, which is covered with a thin film of purple pie filling. “Melanie used to date Kurt Markham.”

  Ann rolls her eyes. “Yes. He drove a red Camaro.”