I’d just bounced a stone seven times when I heard a low whistle, and turned to see Matthew Miller standing at the edge of the grass. He wore a faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and brown pants that were too loose: hand-me-downs from his brother, no doubt, and handmade, like most of the things they wore. He was carrying a metal toolbox. He wasn’t going to the parade, I realized. Now that I thought about it, I supposed the Millers never went.
“You’re good at that,” he said, “for a girl.” He smiled as he said it, though, so I didn’t know if I was allowed to take offense. “What’s your record?”
“Twelve.”
“Mine’s fourteen.” He dropped the toolbox and walked onto the sand, scanning for a likely stone. I was skeptical, but he launched the stone he found in a looping, sidearm motion that surprised me with its grace. It flew low over the water like a bird scanning for fish, then dipped to the surface. We watched and counted. Ten. Matthew looked at me from under his bangs, a satisfied smile on his lips. I hated to admit it, but I was impressed, and he could tell. His smile became a crooked-toothed grin that made me laugh despite myself. I told him I could do better. He said, let’s see.
As I looked for a stone, a voice called his name. Mrs. Miller was standing at the door of the lodge with a dish towel in her hand. “Get over here,” she said sharply, her deep voice carrying easily across the hundred yards between us. “Bring that toolbox with you.”
“Looks like you’re off the hook,” Matthew said, and ran off with the toolbox banging against his leg. I watched him go. When the lodge door closed behind him, I thought of Lilith, Jeannette, and Betty sipping Cokes at one of the wooden tables, Lilith’s dark head glossy in the light from the overhead lamps. I didn’t feel like skipping stones anymore. I gave the sand a shove with my toe and headed back to our house.
Mr. Williams was gone, but Mother was in our side yard talking with Mrs. Williams, who had walked over for a chat. Emily, in a white eyelet dress, sat on a tree stump nearby. As I crossed the yard, she stood up, cast a sly eye at Mother, who was deep in conversation, and sidled off behind the Williamses’ house.
Well, that was interesting. I hadn’t thought of Emily as devious; in fact, she seemed to have no guile at all. But she was definitely up to something now. I cut across the Williamses’ front yard in time to see her slip behind the Joneses’ and head for the lodge. On that side, the lodge rose above the sandy ground on thick posts about three feet high, and Emily, with a quick look over her shoulder, disappeared beneath it.
I was delighted. I’d been so careful not to get my feet dirty, and here was Emily messing about under the lodge in her best white dress, something that surely would earn her an all-too-rare reprimand. I went up to the lodge and peered into the den underneath. Emily squatted ten feet away with her skirt hitched up so her panties were showing. She clutched something to her chest, something small and squirmy, and in the frozen moment after she saw me I realized something was rustling on the ground before her.
“Don’t hurt them,” she whispered.
I walked toward her on my haunches, holding up my own skirt. “Don’t hurt them,” she said again, and now I felt a little bit angry: who did she think I was that I would hurt them, whatever they were? Then I saw what she’d found. A mother cat lay curled in a hollow in the sand, and writhing on her belly were kittens, each no bigger than the palm of my hand. They were so new that their eyes were still sealed shut. In the quiet I could hear the smacking sounds they made as they suckled.
I sank to my knees, my skirt forgotten. The mother looked at me with her eyes glinting and her ears bent back, but she didn’t hiss or growl, which told me Emily had been there often enough to earn her wary trust. One kitten, yellow with a white spot on its forehead, slipped from the pile and burrowed frantically into the backs of its brothers and sisters. I scooped it into my hand. Its claws were tiny needles as it stretched out its paws, searching for the teat. Its pink mouth nuzzled the tip of my finger, the tongue barely a touch on my skin, and its head shook with the effort it took to hold it upright. I could feel its heart, a helpless patter in my palm.
“How did you find them?” I asked.
“Abe showed me.”
“Abe Miller?”
“He’s my friend.” She was proud, even a little defiant. I remembered how Abe had walked over to her the day Lilith and I swam to the pontoon. I hadn’t thought anything of it then, but now the notion of Emily and Abe being friends struck me as strange. Not on Abe’s part: he was childlike, as I’ve said, and he liked to play with the littlest children among the lake families. I’d often seen him holding their hands, or carrying them on his shoulders. But never Emily, because Emily wasn’t allowed to leave our yard without permission, and I was certain Mother would never have permitted her to play with Abe in any event. Her only playmate, infrequent at that, was Amanda Davies, a vivacious girl whose mother sometimes brought her when she visited but who found Emily too dull to seek out otherwise.
Mother’s shrill voice calling Emily’s name interrupted my thoughts. Emily took off running. I returned my kitten to the nest, where it latched hungrily onto a teat, and walked after her, looking back over my shoulder at the dark space beneath the lodge.
Mother was behind the Joneses’, her hands twisted together. Mrs. Williams stood twenty paces off, watching her. When Mother saw Emily she said, “Oh, there you are,” as if it was nothing, but it hadn’t been nothing, and I felt a surge of angry hurt. Lilith and I could spend hours in the distant corners of the forest and Mother wouldn’t care, but Emily couldn’t leave her side for ten minutes without her panicking. I couldn’t imagine how Emily had managed to spend enough time with Abe to become friends. Then I thought: maybe today wasn’t the first time she’d been devious. I looked at her. She stood before Mother in her white dress with her round dark eyes, the picture of contrite innocence. Grudgingly, I was impressed.
Then Mother noticed me, and our disarray—not only was my skirt smudged, but cobwebs littered my hair, and the hem of Emily’s dress, despite her efforts, was brown with dirt. “What have you two been up to?” she asked, her anger at our filth limned with astonishment that we’d been up to anything, together, at all. Emily looked at me, pleading.
I almost told. If Lilith had been there, she would have, and she would have enjoyed watching Mother forbid Emily to go under the lodge ever again. But Lilith wasn’t there, and I remembered the warmth of the kitten in my hand, the furtive way Emily had sneaked away from Mother, and the timbre of her voice when she said Abe was her friend. I said, “We were just playing.” The gratitude that flooded Emily’s face was so naked I had to look away, but it made me glad I hadn’t said anything.
I haven’t been to the Independence Day parade since the late 1960s, when it turned into an unpleasant annual clash over the Vietnam War and we stopped going. When I think of the parades of my youth I hear the brass band playing on hay bales in a horse-pulled wagon, and I see the bunting around the square, the flags on the lampposts, the farmers in clean overalls and the girls with ribbons in their hair. It was just a small town parade, typical for its time, but to me it was no less memorable for being commonplace. Every year Lilith, Mother, Emily, and I stood with the Williamses on the sidewalk outside our pharmacy, waving little flags as Father rode by in Mr. Williams’s Ford with the WILLIAMS & WILLIAMS law firm banner on the grille and the EVANS PHARMACY banner on the back. Father looked so handsome, with his black hair slicked back, his seersucker suit neat on his slender frame, and his straw hat.
At night there would be fireworks over at the baseball field, but the lake families never stayed for them. We went back to the lake, where the Millers would serve us supper as they had on the first night of summer, and then we had our own fireworks show, put on by the oldest Jones brothers, Eddie and Brian. They were in their early twenties then, riotous men-children, survivors of countless scrapes—many involving fire—and they relished the opportunity to blow things up in a community-sanctioned cause.
I’m sure the town’s fireworks couldn’t compare to the show they put on for our eyes only, the blossoms of color falling topsy-turvy in the sky, mirrored in the still night water.
When the fireworks were done, we lit a bonfire on the beach and gathered around it in chairs, on the picnic tables, or on the cool sand. The roar of the fire and the swirling ascension of sparks held us quiet for a time, the firelight throwing strange shadows on the faces of mothers and fathers, grandparents and infants. I sat on the sand beside Lilith, and Mother and Father sat in chairs behind us. Mother’s face was rosy and young-looking in the firelight. Her hair was like mine, frazzled and untamable, but that night it looked like a halo around her pale oval face. Father had his arm around her, his fingers playing with a thread on her shawl. Emily drowsed on his lap, her legs draped over his thighs. My face roasted in the heat of the fire, while my back felt the chill rising off the lake. But I was warm inside, and calm. In the lodge the lights were on; the Millers were cleaning up after our feast. I thought about Matthew scrubbing dishes while the fireworks burst. I hoped he’d been allowed to watch them.
At some point I turned to Lilith, but she was gone. I looked around and saw her on the other side of the bonfire with Jeannette and Betty, the full skirt of her dress tucked close around her legs. They were giggling, their eyes sliding to Charlie and his friends, who sat nearby. The boys were shoving and showing off, as boys do. Then Charlie, urged on by his friends, came to stand behind Lilith. She smiled up at him, and her hand moved to rest on his forearm.
I looked at Father. He was watching them. Even in the dim light I could see the rigid set of his face. Mother saw it, too, and our eyes met. I slipped back from the fire and walked around the group until I was behind Lilith. I leaned close and, masking my words with a smile as though I was sharing a joke, I told her that Father was watching.
For a moment she froze. Then she looked at Father across the fire and laughed, an openmouthed, flirtatious laugh, her teeth shining white. Father’s face remained still, his eyes bent upon her, but his hand jumped where it sat on Mother’s shoulder. Then Lilith turned to Charlie, slid her hand down his forearm, and took his hand in hers.
I stopped breathing. I couldn’t bring myself to look across the fire to where Father surely was watching still. When Jeannette leaned across me to say something to Lilith I slid away, outside the circle, down the dark beach, past our row of houses. I walked to the end of the dock and sat on the cool metal. The moon was half full, and its light spilled on the water. The Milky Way was a gossamer veil across the sky. My thoughts were incoherent and filled with dread.
The night wore on. One by one and two by two people stood, stretched, and left the bonfire. I saw Mother and Father rise, Mother carrying Emily. They didn’t tell Lilith to come, as I thought they might, though Father paused and looked back at the fire before going inside. Only a dozen people were left now, mostly teenagers and younger boys allowed to stay up late on the holiday. I heard Lilith’s clear laughter ring out, and once or twice Charlie’s deepening voice. The littler boys hunted crawdads at the water’s edge and then threw them into the fire to sizzle and explode. Up and down the row the other houses went dark. But in our house the parlor light remained lit.
At last, when the fire huddled down to embers, the last of the revelers stood to leave. I stood, too, my body tight from sitting so long on the dock and my neck sore from turning to watch them. Lilith and her friends said their good nights, and I caught up to her as she reached our steps. She took my hand, and in that gesture I knew she was afraid, and that she was glad to have me there. We walked up the steps together.
Father was sitting in the parlor alone. His legs were crossed and his fingers were templed under his chin. I thought about how long he must have sat there, in the wingback chair, waiting. I wanted to go straight upstairs, but Lilith stopped in the entryway and turned to him. Her face was composed, but her skin was waxen under the ceiling lamp and her hand clutched mine so tightly it seemed she would break its bones.
“Come here.” Father’s eyes were bottomless and without light, his slender fingers a cage beneath his jaw. Lilith let go of my hand and walked into the parlor. She sat on the davenport with her knees pressed together, folded her hands in her lap, and straightened her back.
“Go to bed, Lucy,” Father said. But I didn’t. I went halfway up the stairs and sat where he couldn’t see me but I could see Lilith. She didn’t look at me, but I knew she knew I was there.
“Daughter,” Father said. “You must be careful. There can be sin in the smallest touch.”
Lilith raised her chin almost imperceptibly. “I just held his hand.”
“He is a boy becoming a man. His thoughts are not pure.”
“It’s Charlie. We’ve known him since he was little.”
“Even so. Make no mistake. He wants to corrupt you.”
I could see her neck tighten as she swallowed. Then she said, “What if he does?”
My heart slammed so hard against my ribs I was sure they both could hear it. Lilith’s face was impossibly still, as though she’d turned to marble. Father’s chair creaked as he got up. When he appeared in front of her I tensed, ready to flee, but he didn’t look my way. He knelt down and took her hands in his. I felt a small shock, and my own hands tingled. I couldn’t remember him ever touching either of us with such deliberation. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see hers, and as if it were my own I felt the power of his gaze press upon her brow.
When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Perhaps I should bring you back to town with me.”
A small muscle jumped below Lilith’s eye. She went even paler. “You don’t have to do that.” When he didn’t answer she said, “You can trust me, Father. I won’t let him.”
My hands were shaking. I wound them together and tucked them under my chin. Father considered Lilith for a long moment more. As the silence expanded, my stomach roiled to the point of nausea. He couldn’t take her. I didn’t know what I would do without her.
“Lilith,” he said at last, “you need to understand that there is temptation everywhere. The sins of the flesh will call even in the voices of those you have known all your life. You alone have the power to keep your intentions pure. To remain clean, as a true child of God.”
“I will. I promise.” She lowered her eyelashes. Then, in the quiet church of our parlor, she underwent a strange and arresting alchemy. Without saying another word or moving a single muscle, she grew younger before my eyes, the restless longing of the teenaged girl melting into the unquestioning innocence of the child she had been. I pressed my fingers to my mouth. She was my sister again, the Lilith I’d thought I’d lost.
Father saw it, too. He took a breath that spread his shoulder blades. Then he bowed his head. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your lovingkindness,” he began. Lilith’s lips moved with his through the rest of the psalm. But her eyes found mine, and in them I saw such a raw mixture of defiance and misery that I felt faint.
“Go to bed now,” Father said, when the psalm was done. I ran up the stairs as quietly as I could. When I reached the landing I saw Emily’s door close, the doorknob releasing its catch with a listening, cowardly stealth: Mother.
Then Lilith was there, and she pushed me into our room. She closed our door and leaned against it. I went to her, and she embraced me, and I cried, and felt awful, because she was the one whom Father had chastised and threatened to take back to Williamsburg; she was the one who should be crying, and I should be consoling her. But when we went to bed, she came and lay beside me beneath my covers. As we listened to Father’s footsteps crunch on the path to the bridge, she wrapped me in her arms again, and this time I knew it was she who was the comforted, and I the comforter.
Justine
In the diner on Monday, everyone was talking about a big storm coming. They sounded excited, like a crowd at a bullfight, anticipating the promise of disaster at a safe remove. Maisy, the shoe store owner, said she’d
sold three pairs of boots just that week. Mike the barber sighed; he’d lose money with his shop closed, but even he had a thrill in his voice when he talked about the weather forecast. They reminisced about epic blizzards in the past—the 1995 storm that cut them off from the highway for a week, and the one in 1987 that caved in the roof of the Methodist Church. No, that was 1986, said Roberta Jones, a substitute teacher who had strong opinions about everything. A vigorous debate ensued, with arguments pegged to graduation dates, wedding dates, and birth dates.
It was the sort of conversation, rich with shared history, that Justine most enjoyed eavesdropping on. But this one worried her. If these people, who seemed to be inured to blizzards, were impressed by this upcoming storm, it was cause for serious concern. She remembered midwestern blizzards from her childhood. They always caught Maurie by surprise—they didn’t say anything about snow! she’d say. Then they’d be stuck in the apartment for days eating peanut butter and saltines. Maurie thought it was fun, like camping. Justine thought about Lucy’s isolated house and decided she’d better stop by the Safeway on the way back. She also worried about how the old house would weather the storm. A voice in her head whispered that if Patrick were here, he’d be able to check the roof, fix what needed fixing, keep them safe. She tried to muffle it.
The doorbell jangled. Quentin, one of the two brothers who had breakfast at the counter every morning, came in. His appearance shocked Justine—he’d aged a decade since she’d last seen him, the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone else stopped talking, their faces falling into expressions of sympathy. Without realizing it, they moved closer to one another. Something terrible had happened to Quentin, and it was clear that everyone but Justine knew what it was.
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