by Luanne Rice
“I know that, Dylan,” she said.
He couldn’t reply. Everywhere he looked, he saw things left behind. Isabel’s picture, Chloe’s picture, his mother’s baking bowls, his father’s cane, the crummy commercially produced pies . . . they reminded him in reverse of Jane.
“Something happened this summer,” Sharon said quietly.
Dylan stared at the table, at the five apple seeds.
“I didn’t always like it,” she said. “It hurt like hell at certain times. But I’m very glad for it now.”
“Glad?”
Sharon nodded. “Oh, yes,” she said.
“How can you possibly say that? Chloe was upset. As upset as I’ve seen her since Isabel died.”
“Is that all bad?” Sharon asked.
Dylan shook his head; she was blowing his mind. “Yeah, I’d say so. Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” Sharon said firmly. “It proves she has deep feelings. It’s a sign that she’s alive. We’ve started down this road many times before; remember Family Court? And remember her research through adoption registries? Eli and I wouldn’t give our okay—we thought she was too young.”
“She is, obviously. Look how she handled it, when confronted with—”
“Her mother. Go ahead, Dylan. You can say the words. You had no problem saying them that day in my driveway—and I love you for it. I love how protective you are of us. So, sweetheart—”
She had to stop herself, and Dylan stared up and watched the tears glitter in her eyes. Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end of a cop’s hard stare. His sister-in-law was taking it to a new level—narrowed eyes, thinned lips.
“Sweetheart,” she said steadily. “Now the tables are turning. It’s my turn to protect you from yourself.” She took his cigarettes off the table and tossed them into the garbage.
“I’ll only get them out when you leave,” he said.
“Very mature,” she said.
“And I’ll buy more.”
“Congratulations—you have a wallet. But the bigger question, Dylan, is: Do you have a heart?”
“Sharon, stop.”
“Answer me. You owe me that.”
“Owe?”
“You’ve cared about us all these years. Now sit back and take it, while I do the same for you. Do you have a heart?”
Dylan didn’t reply. His pulse was racing. His eyes lit upon the cardboard pies, and something deep in his rib cage ached as if being ripped out.
“I’ll answer for you,” Sharon said, leaning forward. “You do. It’s the biggest heart around. It led you into your job, where you made it your business to protect a lot of people you didn’t even know. It made you a great husband—”
Dylan shook his head violently, and Sharon grabbed his hand.
“Yes, Dylan. A great husband. Just because she couldn’t accept it didn’t mean you weren’t offering. And you were a great, stellar, wonderful, top-of-the-line father. You were, you were. Even she couldn’t deny that—all she had to do was watch you with Isabel.”
“Sharon.”
She went on, as if she hadn’t heard. “You’re the best brother in the world. The best—to Eli, to me. We love how you are to Chloe. She couldn’t have a better uncle . . . no matter what . . .”
Dylan wanted to say thank you, but he couldn’t speak.
“So I know all about your heart,” Sharon said. “You don’t even have to say a word. But you do have to listen. You do, Dylan. I need you to hear . . . I need to give you something, to give you back everything you’ve given to us. Over the years, being a great brother and uncle. I need to tell you this: Go to New York.”
“What?”
“New York, Dylan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were so happy for a while,” Sharon whispered. Dylan closed his eyes. He heard nightbirds calling in the apple trees. A fresh breeze was bringing September weather, and the air was fragrant with apples. Way in the distance, he heard the whine of dirt bikes.
“The spring, early this summer . . . when she was here.”
“She?”
“You know who I mean,” Sharon said, and of course Dylan did know. He had never been able to get by acting cool to Sharon; she saw right through him.
“Jane,” he said.
“I want you to go see her,” Sharon said.
“How can you say that?” Dylan asked. “After all the trouble she made? She was one big lie—and we all fell for it.”
“We all lie, Dylan,” Sharon said. “Some lies are bigger than others. I used to lie to Eli, going out behind the barn to smoke with you. I’d tell him I wanted to get a breath of fresh air.”
“That’s different,” Dylan said. “And you know it.”
“Yes, it is. Lies are always different, and I suppose they’re never really very good. But some come from better places than others. Amanda’s came from selfishness. From wanting to go behind your back.”
“Enough about that!”
“Exactly,” she said. “Enough! Amanda’s dead. You can’t go filtering everyone else through what she did. Jane is different. She lied because of love.”
“This from you?” Dylan asked. “She comes back to Rhode Island to take your daughter away, and you’re defending her?”
Sharon shook her head. “She wasn’t trying to take Chloe away. She was just trying to know her a little. Because she loves her so much.”
Dylan got chills when she said that, up and down his spine.
“And I think you know how that feels,” Sharon said. “About Jane. I think she was just what you needed.”
“What if she was?” he asked. “That’s over now.”
“It seems to me that ‘over’ is a very funny thing,” Sharon said. “It seems to have rules of its own.”
“What do you mean? I thought you’d want no part of her. I figured you, of all people, would hate what she did this summer.”
“Dylan—I, of all people, understand,” Sharon said. “I’m a mother.”
Dylan’s heart pounded in his ears. He thought of the last time he had held Jane. He thought of the look in her eyes, as she pulled into the driveway with Chloe, when she saw him talking to Sharon. His heart twisted now, because of the betrayal: not what she had done to him, but what he had done to her. Sharon was right: Jane had gone back to New York. Dylan knew, because he had gotten a postcard from her. Just a picture postcard of Greenwich Village with the words “I’m so sorry” written on the back.
The dirt bikes got louder. There was no porch light on, so the riders probably thought Dylan was in for the night. Anger built in his chest. He thought of his land being invaded, and he thought of everything he had lost. What Sharon didn’t know was that everything was too late. Some damage was too great to undo. He went to the closet by the back door, took his shotgun down.
“What are you doing?” Sharon asked, grabbing his arm.
“They’re trespassing,” he said, coldly. Holding a gun was second nature. Driving bad guys away was a hundred times easier than talking with Sharon about his heart. He actually felt glad for the chance to face conflict head-on.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sharon warned.
“Right,” he said, taken by an overwhelming feeling that none of it much mattered anymore, anyway.
Chloe was deep into her collage. Her father had given her a stack of old magazines. She had assembled scissors, Bainbridge board, and double-sided tape. Then she’d cut out a pile of pictures and snippets of words and was putting them all together in a big dream sequence of a picture.
One thing Chloe knew about herself: When her feelings were too big, words deserted her. They fled her brain, leaving her in mute confusion. Emotions threatened mutiny from within, and she was sure she’d be the youngest girl to die of a heart attack with no preexisting condition to blame.
With the windows open, she let the cool orchard breeze ruffle her scraps of paper. Cats had sneaked through the open window and reclined in the most inc
onvenient places: sprawled across the magazines, playing with the tape dispenser, rubbing against Chloe’s leg. Usually Chloe would stop everything, drop to her knees, and become a cat herself. But right now, she was on a mission to finish her collage.
The phone rang. And rang, and rang.
“Hello!” Chloe shouted to her parents. “Would somebody GET that?”
When nobody did, she figured they were still out on the back step, so she lurched for the receiver and said hello. It was, of course, Mona.
“Mother of God,” Chloe said. “I am in the middle of something here.”
“Yes, well, isn’t that nice for you? I, on the other hand, am bored shitless. Rhianna and Dad have gone out to dinner to plan where they’re going for dinner next week—for Black Saturday.”
Chloe chuckled. “Their anniversary?”
“Bien sûr. They’re having the big party on Sunday, but they have to go somewhere romantic the night before—so he can give her the jewelry he bought her.”
“So she can wear it to the party.”
“They’re so vile,” Mona said. “So what are you in the middle of?”
Chloe hesitated. Her language problems extended even to telling Mona about what was going on. She hadn’t told her about the collage—the fact of making it or the actual content. She gazed at it now: Images of importance only to Chloe and, possibly, one other person, adorned the heavy board.
An apple tree. A pie. A mother holding her infant. An ad for “First Look” pregnancy tests. A dolphin and a shark. The word “Calamity.”
“Oh, not much,” Chloe said.
“Equivocate. See if I care.”
“I’m flowin’ again,” Chloe reported, changing the subject.
“Yay—so you’re doubly not pregnant,” Mona said.
“Right. Second period since the scare.”
“Good to know you’re on track.”
“I can’t believe how sick I felt,” Chloe said. Through the window came a familiar, terrible sound. At first she thought it was chain saws, but then she realized: dirt bikes.
“Maybe you should tell Jane.”
“No,” Chloe said.
“It would be the polite thing to do.”
Chloe stared at her collage again, lost in thought and drowning in unspoken words. The sound of the dirt bikes got louder. She poked her head out the window. Her parents were no longer sitting on the step. They must have come inside. A ripple went all through her body and she knew she had to do it: confront Zeke.
“Hear that?” Chloe asked, holding the phone to the window.
“Evil exists,” Mona sad.
“In our orchard.”
“Call Uncle Dylan to drive it away.”
“Why send a man to do a woman’s job?” Chloe asked, sticking her scissors in the waistband of her shorts. “This is my mission.”
“Be careful,” Mona said, sounding alarmed.
“I will,” Chloe said, hanging up. She thought of her word problem. She had stopped speaking after Isabel’s death. Then she had started talking again, and had kept it up till this summer. Although it hadn’t been as severe or extreme—the average person wouldn’t notice—Chloe had become internally tongue-tied.
She knew it had to with Jane, and with Zeke. She had things she had to say to each of them, words trapped inside her chest. They were live things, eating her from within. She had to find ways to let them out.
The collage was one way.
Scissors in her belt were another.
Chloe scrambled out onto the roof, slid down the drainpipe. The cats left behind in her room meowed and cried. I’ll be back, she thought, saluting them. Meteors streaked through the sky, lighting her way. She climbed over the rail fence and ran barefoot into the trees.
The engines roared and whined. Chloe had insider knowledge of where Zeke liked to ride. She remembered his circuitous route over the hills and around the barn, back to the stream. Crouched low, to keep from running into apple tree branches, Chloe sped through the orchard.
She saw the lights. They bounced like illuminated balloons, like silvery moons. Hiding in the bushes, her heart was in her throat. They came closer, and she heard sticks and branches breaking under their tires. She thought of that time she had waited for Zeke, when she had been so excited. The memory almost brought tears to her eyes, for the innocent girl she had been back then.
Just as the bikes cleared the crest of the hill, she yanked the scissors from her waistband and jumped out. She stood right in the middle of the path, seeing the lights bear down on her.
“What the fuck?” the first driver yelled, swerving to avoid her. He went off the trail, into the narrow strip of grass between the rows of trees, managing to right himself just before crashing. The second driver, Zeke, stopped right in Chloe’s face.
“Hey,” Zeke said. His eyes were blank, but he smiled.
“Hey,” she said back. “What do you know? It’s Zoe.”
“Huh.” He laughed.
“Zeke, man,” the other driver said. “Come on . . .”
But Chloe was blocking the way. They weren’t getting around her. She stood very still, scissors out in front of her. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said.
“Hate to tell you, Chloe,” Zeke said. “But you can’t stop us. You can’t really stop us at all, you know?”
“I know you think that,” she whispered.
The other guy laughed. “This the one?”
“This is Chloe,” Zeke said, and that was enough of a signal for his friend. He laughed, wheeled closer to see her.
“She’s cute,” he said. “I’d do her.”
The night was dark. A canopy of branches arched overhead, blocking any light from the stars. Chloe wasn’t afraid. She barely even looked at the other one; her gaze, her derision, was all for Zeke.
“I despise you,” she said.
“You didn’t act that way in June,” he said.
“Tell yourself that,” she said.
“I don’t have to tell myself anything,” he said, sounding impatient and showing the first signs of anger. “I know it when I see it. You came on to me.”
“You’re pathetic,” she said. “That you actually believe that.”
“I believe what I see,” Zeke said.
“We saw you in Newport,” Chloe said, remembering standing on Bannister’s Wharf with Jane and the others, seeing him eat that hot dog. “And you ran away.”
“Who needed to meet your parents?” he asked. “The girls I date don’t generally spend their weekend nights hanging out with Mom and Dad.”
Chloe felt a strange sensation, hearing someone call Jane her mom and having it be true. But she refused to be diverted, and just stared him down.
“You’re a coward,” she said. “And I want you to know I know that.”
“Her body’s saying ‘go’ right now,” the friend said. Chloe walked over to him. She looked him straight in the eyes. Then she raised her scissors over her head. She thought of the pictures of babies and mothers and apples she had just cut out of her father’s magazines. She thought of herself and Jane and the pain girls had to go through because of heartless boys. And she stabbed his front tire.
“Fucking bitch!” the friend exclaimed, jumping off his bike as the air hissed out of his tire.
“You just bought yourself a tire, Chloe,” Zeke said laconically. She stared him right in the eyes, then stabbed his front tire.
“Two,” she said. “And you’re still a coward.”
“Cunt!” Zeke exploded. The cords on his neck stood out as he vaulted off his bike and lunged at Chloe. She had the scissors in her hand, but in the half-second she had to process the moment, she knew she couldn’t use them. Tires were one thing, but she was constitutionally incapable of harming any creature—even a clam, even Zeke.
Still, she was fast, and she knew the orchard better than anyone, so she ducked and ran. She flew up the hill, from where the bikes had come. She dodged through the apple trees, hearin
g the boys crashing behind her. They were gaining on her, but she had superhuman speed.
Chloe had spoken. She had told Zeke what she had to say, and she had reclaimed the orchard from those bad memories. Her collage was her poem, her song, and when it was done, all that was left would be for her to sing it. Courage gave her wings. She flew through the trees. She came to a wide meadow—and there, on the other side, was the barn.
The beautiful old red barn, with the cupola on top. Chloe had to get to it, and then she would be safe. There was no place to hide in the meadow, but if she managed to get across, she would make it to the barn. She could lock the door behind her, and they’d never get in. Uncle Dylan’s house was just over the next rise, and she’d go up into the cupola and yell so loud, he’d hear her.
The cupola. Gazing at it, hearing the boys gaining, an old memory shot through Chloe’s mind. She had thought it had eyes. She had thought the cupola was home to angels, owls, protective spirits.
Chloe had thought it was home to her real mother.
The memory made her gasp with a sob. Kicking into higher speed, she took off into the tall grass of the wide meadow. The grasses tickled her legs, all the way up to her waist. She ran as fast as she could, arms working to give her more speed. Thirty yards, twenty yards. She wanted to glance back, but she didn’t dare.
She just ran on blind faith. Chloe felt someone was protecting, watching over her. She had learned this summer that things weren’t always what they seemed, that the obvious sometimes hid unimaginable mysteries. The sky was alive with meteors, crashing through the darkness, leaving trails of fire.
“Help,” she called as she ran.
Pound, pound, pound: her feet, their feet.
They were gaining on her. She felt someone pluck the back of her shirt; tearing away, she poured on more speed.
“Help!” she called again, breathless.
How could she get into the barn without them catching her? And what if the doors were locked? Could she scramble up to the open hayloft? She was used to climbing the drainpipe into her room. . . .
It came up fast. The red barn had been just a shadow in the starlight, but now it was there, smack in front of her. She flew against the door, rattled the rusty old iron handle, moaned as she found it locked.