The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

by Laird Koenig

  She had poured both cups of tea.

  "Milk and sugar?"

  Mario nodded. The girl’s motions were practiced. Two tiny spoonfuls of sugar went into his tea. She poured exactly the amount of milk to fill the cup, cutting its flow off with a snap of the wrist so expertly that not one drop spilled. She handed him the saucer.

  He held it, the cup chattering against the saucer.

  She put only a pinch or sugar into her cup, lifted it delicately, but instead of sipping, she took her teaspoon and stirred the tea.

  "After my father and I finished that dinner, we walked and walked in the soft London night. We planned, together—very carefully—what we must do—once my father was dead—to keep my mother who’d been living in Italy from swooping down on me."

  The boy’s cup and saucer rattled and he returned it to the table. The girl took the letter and put it inside her caftan.

  "When I say the word mother it doesn’t mean a thing. My only memory of her is her bright-red fingernails. She’d run off years ago. Which was actually a very good thing as she had once been arrested for beating me. One day my father came home, found her bashing about the house in a drunken stupor, me black-and-blue, and on the spot, he kicked her out and raised me. I only saw the woman one time before she came here. That was the time my father won a prize for his poetry and she smelled money. Other than that he only had a bit of money, you see. Not a lot, but enough that once he was gone, we could count on her flapping down and sinking her great painted claws into me."

  She offered the boy the plate with the cookies.

  "Biscuits?"

  The boy took one with slivered almonds on top.

  "I would have gone to a lawyer."

  "No you wouldn’t."

  Her harshness surprised him.

  "Why use up all the money on lawyers and then have to do what the court says. All that would do is make the court decide how I’d be reared, which means what school they’d lock me up in."

  "You should have got a guardian."

  “A godfather?"

  “I’m serious."

  "Who? My father didn’t have any living relatives. The only people we knew were mad poets. The poets we knew—except for my father—may be madly talented, but they wouldn’t make very good parents."

  "Besides, you don’t need anybody you’re so staggeringly brilliant."

  She looked at Mario. He shrugged. "That was supposed to be a joke."

  "It happens to be true. That’s why my father sold off everything, got all the money he could and left England without a word to anyone. That was last spring. All spring and summer we drove a rented car from North Carolina and the place where Carl Sandburg lived, to Maine to find the place I liked best."

  "Then you found this?"

  "Do you have to fool with that umbrella?"

  Mario looked down. He was holding the umbrella in the same way he sometimes held his cane, as a wand.

  "Sorry,"

  From where he sat he opened the lid of the woodbox and tossed the umbrella inside. He lowered the lid.

  "That was just after Labor Day. People were packing up and streaming back into the city. We came down this lane with the dense trees that seemed to be reaching out and touching hands overhead. Then I saw the yard. full of zinnias blazing with color. We got out of the car and looked through the window. One could see no one lived here. My father asked me if I was quite certain, I could spend the next three years of my life here exactly as we planned it. He wouldn’t let me decide for a week. He made me think about it very carefully after we had found out through the estate agents in the village, that it was free. He leased the house... paid for it for the next three years."

  She lifted her tea and stirred it with a spoon but did not sip.

  "Good tea,” said Mario.

  "Good," she said. "We’ll make an Englishman out of you yet."

  They glanced at each other. Again something had been said that included them in a future together.

  "Almost all of September my father looked fine, and if the pain was terrible he never said a thing. He’d go into that room, close the door, take something. Right up till the last we’d go for long walks, through the lanes, along the beach. For miles and miles and miles. One Sunday evening when it was very hot and breathlessly still we were sitting here in this room in the dusk. He switched on the record player. Liszt. We sat. As I say, here. In this very room. We listened to the piece. Neither of us said a word. That’s when he took my hand and we went out into the garden. In a quiet voice he said that I wasn’t like any other person in the world and that some people wouldn’t understand that. They wouldn’t want me to be the way I was. They’d want to change me. They’d try to order me about and make me into the kind of person they wanted me to be. Since I was still a child there would be little I could do except stay alone, stay out of trouble, and make myself very small in the world."

  "Alone?" Mario spoke the word as if it were only a concept, something he could not quite imagine, certainly not a way of life.

  "We’d worked out every detail of it," she said. "We both knew full well it wouldn’t be easy. ‘Do anything you must’ father said. 'Fight them any way you have to. Survive.' He kissed me—it was in the grape arbor—and then he walked off through the trees and down the lane."

  "He never came back?" Mario went deep red, showing immediately that he wished to hell he had not said those words, Of course he knew her father had never come back.

  "In that room—on his desk—I found charts—tide-tables of the waters both in the Sound and the ocean. What he’d been doing was studying the tides He’ll never be found."

  "Did you cry a lot?"

  "Depends on what you, mean by a lot. No, I don’t think so."

  "You believe in God?"

  "It would be nice."

  "But you don’t."

  "I don’t know."

  "Me too.”

  He crunched another cookie and washed it down with a gulp of tea.

  "You shouldn’t keep money around the house," he said.

  "My father and I opened a joint checking account. I have absolutely heaps of traveler’s checks."

  "Can kids have them?"

  Her gaze was steady across her tea cup.

  "I just told you I do."

  She reached down inside her caftan where she had put the letter. This time she pulled out a gold chain and dangled a key. She almost smiled as she gave the key a swing and it described a circle. "I keep most of them in a safe deposit box at the bank."

  "I never heard of a kid having traveler’s checks before."

  "I said ‘heaps,’ but actually I have to make them last three years." She dropped the key and the chain back down inside her gown.

  "So now you know," she said.

  "Yeah," he was staring at his tea.

  "Rynn?"

  "Mm?"

  "Would it be so awful, I mean, if you did have to play the game?"

  "But that’s what this has been all for—"

  "I know," he said. "No, I don’t really. Maybe what I don’t understand is what you and your father mean by the game."

  She sighed deeply as if to say he was not trying to understand.

  "The game is pretending. It’s going through the motions of life. But it’s not living."

  "School’s living."

  "No." Rynn shook her head till she had to brush her long hair away from her eyes. "School is having people tell you what living is, not finding out for yourself."

  "But you have to go to school."

  "Why?"

  "To learn something."

  "Such as?"

  "Read and write. And—"

  "I can’t read? I can’t write?"

  "Okay. So your father taught you. What if a person doesn’t have a father like yours?"

  "Did I ever say I was talking about anyone but myself? If you love school so much good luck to you."

  "Except I don’t think you mean that."

  "Why should I want ever
yone to be like me any more than I want to be like everyone else?"

  "I’m not like everyone else," Mario protested.

  "I’m talking about them."

  "Who?"

  "All of them with their bubble gum and trashy music and football games."

  "It’s not all like that—"

  "School is for kids who will grow up and never write a poem or sing a song or do anything." Her faith in what she was saying was complete. "Like doing a magic trick. Did school teach you to do magic?"

  "No."

  "You see?" She folded her arms across her white caftan. "The game is for people who want rules because they’re afraid to believe anything everyone else doesn’t already believe. They’re all scared to leave the street where they live and do something with their lives. The game is for people who want to be told what to do. Okay. Good for them, if that’s what they want."

  "Everyone can’t be like you."

  "Nobody’s like anybody! I just told you, nobody else has to live the way I do."

  "Living like this ... wow! I mean ... "

  "Yes?" There was that harshness again, a challenge.

  "I mean people help people."

  "You’ve got a family."

  "Other people. They want to. Sometimes," he added weakly.

  "In my case there was no one. Are you saying that my father and I didn’t think long and hard about it? Do you imagine we just decided this overnight? I mean for me it would have meant some hideous school smelling of chalk and cabbage—"

  "You might have found a good school."

  "A school! A school telling me how to live, what to think, what to do with the rest of my life. A school with my money managed by some solicitor until they decided I was old enough to be trusted with what was mine. Besides..." She stirred her tea. "This is only the way I live now. I only have to be careful till theythink I’m old enough to do as I choose."

  "Who’s they?"

  "Everyone!"

  "Wow. You know how that sounds? I mean you keep sayingthey—like everyone’s out to get you."

  "Maybe they are."

  The boy gulped his tea before he said, "You’ve got to trust someone!"

  Suddenly, Mario found he could not meet Rynn’s eyes. Nor could she bear to look directly at him, as if only now, only after she had told him things she had told no one else, both of them had begun to fathom what she, what they, had done.

  Mario studied the tea she had not touched.

  "How did she—your mother—find you?"

  Rynn put the saucer on the coffee table and stared into the fire. "My fault actually. A poem I published. My first feelings about this place. Friends of hers saw it in England and sent it on to her in Greece. People who know Long Island recognized places I wrote about. One day a taxi stopped out there in the lane...."

  Mario wondered if she intended to go on. Perhaps he had heard all she was willing to share. He felt that asking her to reveal more might make her retreat into silence. But she did speak.

  "The front door was open. She walked right in—fingernails as red as ever. I loathed myself for doing it, but I actually pretended to be happy to see her. My God, the nerve of her, coming here.... She was the kind of woman who thinks everyone will forgive her anything. She sat right in that chair, smoked her gold-tipped cigarettes and went on and on about how awful the pollution in the Mediterranean was getting to be, and how much she loathed and detested the Greeks, how marvelous it would be to live here."

  Rynn turned from the fire to look beyond Mario at the rocking chair.

  "We had tea then as well. She wanted a drink but I didn’t have any. Tea. And the same almond biscuits."

  "They’re very good."

  "She liked them too."

  The boy took another cookie. It did taste strongly of almonds. After a moment, he asked,

  "In the tea?"

  She nodded.

  Mario, who was sipping at this moment, suddenly stopped and he wondered if he could swallow.

  "Potassium cyanide."

  The boy was trying to keep his cup from chattering in the saucer.

  "The Wilsons used the studio as a darkroom. I found the stuff when my father and I packed away their photographic chemicals. As I said before, I can read. I read the warning on the label."

  The girl’s tea glinted in the firelight. She had not taken one sip from the cup. Her eyes met his. Very calmly she said, "It’s too hot. I didn’t put any cold milk in mine."

  Mario wondered if she could see that he was beginning to sweat.

  But she was thinking of her mother..

  "I can still see her red nails holding the cup. After a few sips she said her tea tasted of almonds."

  Mario’s cup clattered until the saucer was safely on the table.

  "Of course it tasted of almonds." The girl swung her hair back from her eyes. "You know what I told her?"

  Mario’s face gleamed in the firelight. He felt his shirt, streaming wet under the armpits, its back drenched and sticking to him.

  "It’s the almond biscuit, I told her. She believed that. They come from Fortnum’s, I said. 'Lovely,' she said. And she did—she really loved that. She loved anything that came from the posh shops. She’d put better labels into coats; and she’d only carry the poshest shopping bags. Harrods, at the very least." Rynn was in her own world, talking to herself.

  Mario felt his throat tighten. He was terribly aware of each breath he took. Each was more of a struggle.

  "How long did it take?" he managed to ask.

  "Quite fast actually."

  "Like first you get sleepy?"

  "Apparently. Very."

  Mario’s hand sought the floor. It was steady. He felt feverish; he was sweating. Each breath took increasing effort.

  Rynn’s untouched cup of tea shimmered in front of him.

  "You tired?"

  Mario shook his head to deny the weariness he fought.

  "No." His voice was a rasp.

  "I shouldn’t wonder if you were," Rynn said. "It’s late." Her hand sought his, but he pulled away.

  "Do you know what I think might be a very good idea? I think it might be a very good idea if you were to ring your parents. Tell them you’re still at the birthday party."

  "But I’m not—" He coughed.

  "But earlier you told your mother you were."

  Mario was shaking his head. He did not want to call.

  "I really do. I think you should ring your family. Want me to bring the phone to you?"

  "What good would that do you?"

  "Us," she corrected him.

  "My Uncle Ron knows I’m here."

  "He won’t tell."

  "Ring them. Tell them you’re still at the party."

  He shook his head no.

  "Then what happened. I mean to her." Somehow Mario fought his way through this thicket of words, the confusion, the web in which he was convinced she was trying to ensnare him.

  "Mother struggled to catch her breath."

  "And then?"

  "Then? Finally she just . . . slumped over. In that chair."

  Mario’s mind raced. He would telephone. He would tell the girl he was telephoning his family, but instead he would call the hospital and have them send an ambulance.

  "She lay in that chair a very long time whilst I wondered what to do with her. I didn’t think of the trap door to the cellar. Not then. As you say about magic, one doesn’t think to do the obvious. Not at first."

  He saw her pick up the teapot.

  "More?"

  Weak with dread he made a sign that meant no.

  "I guess I will phone."

  "Good." The girl rose. "You wait here, I’ll bring it to you." She ran barefoot across the shining floor.

  She put the phone beside him.

  "You are tired."

  Mario forced himself to sit up.

  "Do you want me to dial it for you?"

  So that’s her plan. She knows I’ll call for help, so she’s not going to let me c
all anyone but them, and that’s to set up her alibi.... What can I do? Can I grab the phone and call the hospital? ...

  "Are you all right?"

  "I’m okay," he managed to whisper.

  What can I do? …

  His mind raced; he considered running from the house. On his goddamn cane. How far could he hope to get—Suddenly the girl’s hand reached out and her move stopped any further thoughts of escape. He could only stare.

  She had lifted her saucer and was sipping her tea. With her other white hand she had picked up an almond cookie which she nibbled. A pink tongue, like a kittens, ran over her lips collecting stray crumbs.

  "Listen," she said, but this time there was no urgency in her command.

  Mario strained to hear what had drawn her attention.

  "The wind," the boy said.

  "Creatures chuckling on the roofs and whistling in the air."

  Again Rynn reached for his hand. This time he did not pull away. She spoke and Mario wondered if the lines were her father’s poetry.

  An awful Tempest mashed the air—

  The clouds were gaunt, and few—

  A black—as of a Spectre’s Cloak

  Hid Heaven and Earth from view.

  The creatures chuckled on the Roofs—

  And whistled in the air—

  And shook their lists—

  And gnashed their teeth—

  And swung their frenzied hair.

  Rynn rose and took the tray noiselessly into the kitchen.

  With both hands on the table, Mario found he was able to stand.

  "And swung their frenzied hair. Wow!"

  "Does that give you a chill?"

  "Like sandpaper up and down your back when it gets really good in opera."

  Mario waited till her back was turned to rise. On his feet and assured that he was still alive, he broke into his beautiful sunshine grin.

  The girl rinsed out the tea cups and put them on the counter to drain. She was drying the teapot.

  Mario stretched his arms till he felt the muscles in his young body ache pleasantly and his blood surge through his limbs. He twisted, enjoying the warming feeling.