The Decoding of Lana Morris

by Laura McNeal

  Lana begins to compose an answer, but Inspector Stiller, watching and realizing, probably, that Lana’s composing an answer, holds up a hand. “It’s okay,” she says, and a faint smile seems to appear on her lips. “I’m pretty good at filling in the blanks.”

  A hole to crawl into. That’s all Lana wants.

  “I’m leaving,” the inspector says finally. She sidesteps Garth, who’s sitting on the floor near the door. But from the bottom of the front porch steps, Inspector Stiller casts one last look back at Lana. “By the way, where would”—she flips to a page on her clipboard—“Alfred Mobilio be right now?”

  This time Lana doesn’t try to compose an answer. She opens her mouth and hears herself say, “He’s with Mrs. Arnot. His job coach.”

  Inspector Stiller takes this in. “When are they due to return?”

  “About an hour,” Lana says, surprised at the size and quickness of her lie. “Mrs. Arnot always does her job and then some,” she adds, suddenly afraid the inspector will call and check.

  There are a few moments of complete stillness before the inspector says, “I see.” She jots something on her clipboard and, after giving Lana a smile that seems now not only small but cruel, she walks to her car.

  45.

  “Alfred?” Lana calls when the car has pulled away. “Can you hear me, Alfred?”

  Tilly and Carlito stop and listen when Lana stops and listens. They follow her up and down the street, a few houses in each direction, calling out Alfred’s name as they go. When Lana sees Mrs. Harbaugh across the street staring at them with a jutting chin, she yells, “What’re you looking at, Hairball?” and without a word Mrs. Harbaugh moves back into the deeper shadows of her porch.

  They are looking for Alfred, but behind the looking is a waiting. Waiting for what happens next with Protective Services, because something’s going to happen, that much Lana knows. This, she thinks, is how people would feel if they knew they were about to have a terrible earthquake or hurricane or fire, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Someone complained about the Winters house, and Inspector Stiller had gotten the goods on them, and now the disaster is heading their way. It’s just a question of when it will hit and what the damage will be. But Snick House is over; Lana’s sure of it. Whit and Veronica will lose their license. She’ll be separated from Whit and she’ll be separated from Tilly and Garth and Carlito and Alfred.

  She needs to do something.

  She needs to draw something.

  But what?

  What do you draw to keep things from burning up or falling apart or blowing away?

  “Alfred!”

  She and Tilly and Carlito stop, and listen, and move on.

  Lana gets the flashlight from the storeroom and they check the attic, then the basement. They check the backyard and the alley in each direction. Then they check the garage. Inside, no one answers when they call, but they hear a scritching sound.

  “Mouse,” Tilly says, and it’s true, it does sound like a mouse, except the sound doesn’t stop when they call Alfred’s name. They creep toward the sound, Lana scanning the dark corners with the beam of the flashlight. The scritch scritch gets louder as they approach a row of rusty gray file cabinets—a repainting project Whit’s never quite gotten to—and there, behind the wall of cabinets, sitting on a pile of old boat cushions and staring up into the beam of the flashlight, is Alfred. Positioned across his knees is the Ladies Drawing Kit.

  “Alfred!” Lana screams, and this freezes everybody for an instant, and then Alfred puts down the pencil and starts saying, “S-s-sorry, s-s-sorry, s-s-sorry.”

  Lana grabs the kit from him and holds it under the light. There they are: the thick pink-flecked sheets of old paper, and he’s been writing on them. Lana feels the terrible sensation of tumbling into free fall. On the first page, Alfred has written: BIE SAINGS ON MENWEAR. RDE TAG FRIDAY COEM SEE. There’s more but she doesn’t read it. Two whole pages are filled up like that. The next one says MISS TEEN AMERICA TESXA. MISS TEEN AMERCIA ARZIONA. Five teens and five states in big block letters. There’s one that seems to be a recipe for CHOCLAT CKOOIES and one about Christmas centerpieces. The last is just one line: BCKKK OFF VRONICA.

  Back off, Veronica. Lana has seen this kind of note before. Alfred wrote one to Carlito once and one to Mrs. Arnot when she wanted him to try working at the D.Q.

  The paper is wasted.

  Alfred is hitting himself in the face, not too hard, but hard enough so Lana knows he’s upset, and yet Lana feels a hardness take hold of her, the same hardness she saw in her mother when Lana would pour her mother’s booze down the sink or flush her drugs down the toilet, the hardness that made her mean.

  “Stop hitting yourself, Goddamn it!” she shouts at Alfred, but he doesn’t stop, he starts crying and hits himself harder. Tilly’s crying now, too, and Carlito.

  Lana wonders why she doesn’t feel sorry for them, but she doesn’t. “Stop it!” she hears herself yell again. “Stop it right now!” and Alfred’s sobbing deepens until Tilly does something surprising. She walks up to Lana and pushes her in the chest and through her own sobbing says fiercely,

  “You stop it! You stop it, Lana!”

  And when Lana does stop it and looks into Tilly’s squinched, fierce, weepy face, all her normal feelings come flooding back, and she drops the used papers and goes over to Alfred and puts her arms around him and feels his warm tears on her neck and hears her words flow in an easy, soothing stream. “It’s okay, Alfred, the paper doesn’t matter, I’m not mad, Alfred, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  Later, when Alfred is calm again and they are all walking back into the house for the Otter Pops Lana has promised them, she flips the drawing kit open.

  There is one blank sheet left.

  Only one.

  46.

  While the others are eating their Otter Pops (there is no quarreling, for once, over flavors), Lana hides the drawing kit on the top shelf of her closet, and after she’s done this, her hopeful spirits slowly begin to build again. Inspector Stiller found the house in bad shape, but maybe this will somehow be a good thing for her and Whit. Alfred wasted six pages, but she still has one left, and she’s always sensed that the last one would be the most important one anyway.

  When she gets downstairs, she organizes a big house-wide, room-to-room cleanup campaign so things’ll be spick-and-span in case the state sends anybody else out today. She even gets Garth to pitch in by promising to call for his mother as soon as they’re done. It goes slow—the Snicks are easily distracted—and matters aren’t helped when, about a half hour in, Chet shows up with a jar full of smallish black and red bugs.

  “What’re those?”

  “Box elder bugs,” he says.

  Lana remembers the Oddball Olympics. “You going to get your new girlfriend to take off all her clothes and eat one?”

  This seems to amuse Chet. “I’d enjoy that,” he says.

  “Which—her taking off her clothes or her eating a bug?”

  “Both,” he says, and Lana has to laugh.

  Tilly, who’s been staring into the jar, says, “Let them go!”

  Chet looks at them. “Yeah, I probably will, but I might keep a couple as pets. They’re harmless; I looked them up. They eat tree leaves and stuff. They won’t bite you. The article I read said they have slender, sucking mouthparts.”

  Lana says, “I wouldn’t want to keep as a pet something with slender, sucking mouthparts.”

  Chet stares into the jar. “They stick together, though. In the winter I’ve seen them in huge masses on sunny sides of rocks and stuff.”

  Tilly says, “That’s good,” and Chet nods. “Yeah, it is.”

  Lana says, “You going to eat one, just to see how the event might go?”

  Chet regards the bugs for a long moment and says, “No, I don’t think I will.” Then, to Tilly and the others, “Shall we set my beetles free?”

  The Snicks are keen on the idea, though the beetle-freeing is a
little disappointing in that the bugs don’t go when the lid is lifted off. They have to be shaken out. Only Chet’s thumping the bottom of the jar with the heel of his hand gets the last few to fly.

  Lana asks Chet if he wants to help with the gala Snick House room-to-room cleanup, and, to her surprise, he accepts. Better yet, he works hard and fast, and before long, things look more or less presentable. Chet’s hair is damp with sweat and Lana pulls her shirt at the collar to let in air.

  “Was there a reward at the end of this quest?” Chet says, and Lana says, “How about salami sandwiches?”

  “With iced tea?” Chet says.

  While they eat, Lana gives Chet the details of Inspector Stiller’s visit. “Anyway,” she says, “I think they’re going to close down Snick House.”

  Chet has stopped chewing during this last observation but resumes now. “Well, that would make my dad happy.”

  Lana asks what that means.

  “He’s just never liked having … this facility next door. Says it drives down the property values.” He smiles wanly and shakes his head. “That’s just who my father is.”

  “Well,” Lana says, “maybe if there’s a God, he’ll devise just the right punishment for your father.”

  Chet grins. “Maybe.”

  Garth, who’s eaten only one central bite from each half of his sandwich, rises and goes back to his waiting post by the front door. Chet says he’s going, too.

  “Where to?”

  An odd look crosses Chet’s face. “I’ve just got to do a couple of things,” he says.

  Lana guesses he’s going to see his new girlfriend or at least try to, an idea that, to her surprise, makes her less happy than she knows it should. She does her best, though. She nods and smiles and says, “Good luck with those errands, Chesterfield.”

  She’s never called him Chester before, let alone Chesterfield, but after it comes out, she kind of likes it, and Chet doesn’t seem to mind. On his way out, he says, “Later, Garth-man,” but Garth doesn’t even look up from his Popeye doll.

  Lana washes down the last of her sandwich with tea and heads for the house phone. She dials the Best Western and the clerk answers on the second ring.

  “Are there phones in the rooms?” Lana asks, and the clerk says, “Yes, ma’am. Also color TVs and vibrating recliner chairs.”

  “Well, could you connect me to Mrs. Stoneman’s room?”

  “Mrs. Stoneman,” the clerk repeats. Then, “I don’t see a Mrs. Stoneman.”

  A faint alarm sounds within Lana. “She stayed there last night.”

  “Checking,” the clerk says. A few seconds pass. “That’s right, she was here last night, but she checked out this morning at ten-thirty. I remember she used the pool and then a short time later she left.”

  “Mrs. Stoneman?” Lana says.

  “That’s right. Mrs. Stoneman. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No,” Lana says. “No, there’s not.”

  47.

  Lana doesn’t speak to Garth about his mother’s leaving. She doesn’t have to. She knows Garth knows. And she knows Garth knew. Probably from the moment his mother snapped at him yesterday. Certainly when she didn’t appear after breakfast today.

  Garth sits now by the front door, his thin legs stretched in front of him, his back braced by an old upholstered chair, all of his action figures stationed on the wood floor around him except Popeye, who Garth holds with one hand and strokes with the other.

  Lana slides down onto the floor beside him, close but not too close. She picks up the Spider-Man doll and realizes how much he resembles the buff guy on the front of Veronica’s magazine except Spider-Man has his tight costume painted on. “Know why I like Popeye best?” she says.

  Garth doesn’t answer.

  Because he looks like a normal person, she starts to say, but stops herself. “Because he looks just like you and me,” she says.

  Garth stops smoothing his hand along the length of Popeye’s back. His face twists into a look of terrible anguish. “ ’Ot ’umming,” he says. “ ’Ot ’umming for me.”

  It takes Lana a second to supply the right consonants, and by the time she gets “not coming for me,” Garth has started to cry.

  “She might, Garth, your mother might come back,” Lana says, but she hears how puny and untrue the words sound even as she speaks them.

  “ ’Ot!” he says with awful vehemence. “ ’Ot ’umming ever!”

  Lana starts to disagree, to offer hope where there isn’t hope, but she can’t. She just can’t.

  She eases closer to Garth. She’s almost holding her breath as she extends her arm beyond him and carefully lowers her hand until it barely touches his shoulder and then, as she slowly lets the full weight of her arm settle across the breadth of his thin shoulders, he screams and pulls back from her. He trembles and holds himself and seems so incredibly slight, as if there is nothing to him except skin stretched over hollow bones.

  “It’s okay,” she says, trying to soothe him with her voice. “It’s okay, Garth, you’ve got us.”

  And it’s true, for the moment, it’s literally true. Tilly and Alfred and Carlito materialize from nowhere, and Carlito leans forward to bless Garth’s shoulder, which Garth allows, to Lana’s surprise, and then Tilly and Alfred and Carlito are standing around them in a circle of oddness and fondness and need, and Garth stops crying. If Lana has ever felt more certain of anything, she can’t remember when it might’ve been.

  “You’ve got us,” she says again. “You’ve got me.”

  48.

  Mid-afternoon, Veronica returns home. Her face has a radiant quality—it almost glows. Lana, unobserved, watches her from the kitchen, and Veronica starts slightly when Lana says, “How’d the physical therapy go?”

  After Veronica realizes that it’s Lana, her surprise fades. “Oh, it’s you,” she says, hardly glancing Lana’s way, which is fine by Lana because she’s in her bathing suit, a thick, horrible two-piece that she only put on because nobody but the Snicks were around. Veronica picks through the small pile of mail that had been neatly stacked on the kitchen table. If she’s noticed how clean the house is, she doesn’t mention it.

  Lana glances out the window to the backyard, where the Snicks are sitting in the plastic wading pool they’ve cleaned and filled, or at least all of the Snicks except Garth. He’s gone back into his lilac room.

  When she turns back, Veronica has left the mail scattered on the table and is heading for the stairs.

  Lana steps out of the kitchen. “So was it tough?” she says.

  Veronica looks back. “Was what tough?”

  “The physical therapy,” Lana says. “With Dr. Gooch.”

  “Oh,” Veronica says. “Yes, it was. It was very demanding.” And then Veronica’s eyes go regal and cold and sly. “But I took a surprising amount of pleasure in it.” She sends her gaze beyond Lana. “Unfortunately, I’m a long way from finished. Dr. Gooch says we will definitely need to schedule some extra sessions.”

  As Veronica lets this settle in, her gaze drifts down to Lana’s swimsuit. “Well, aren’t you the long, skinny thing,” she says. She smiles her cool smile. “But the bikini is all wrong for you. You should try a high-cut one-piece to distract from the fact that you are for all practical purposes boobless.”

  Snick House is waiting for the wrecking ball and I’m getting fashion tips from the Sleaze Queen. That’s what Lana thinks. “Faith,” she says. “Unity.”

  “And the same to you,” Veronica says pleasantly, and begins again up the stairs.

  “An inspector was here today from Protective Services.”

  Veronica turns. “What did he want?”

  “It was a woman. She seemed interested in your whereabouts. Somebody filed a complaint.”

  “About what?”

  Lana shrugs. “Who knows? She went through your room, though. She took a bottle that said T.L.C. Primera on it. Also a magazine with naked men in it.”

 
Veronica is surprisingly calm. She comes to some quick conclusion about what has happened, and the conclusion, whatever it is, doesn’t disturb her. “It’s just as well,” she says. “Dr. Gooch doesn’t like the fact that I have to deal with the added trials of running a foster home when I should be dedicating myself to my complete recovery.”

  As if running Snick House has been much of a trial to her recently, Lana thinks, but she doesn’t want to argue. Besides, that isn’t what concerns her. “You don’t care that it might be the end of Snick House?”

  Veronica gives this a frosty laugh. “I’ve spent years praying that I wouldn’t need to run this place, but we always needed the money. And now …”

  “And now you don’t?”

  Satisfaction slips into Veronica’s expression. “Dr. Gooch is very committed to my full and complete recovery.”

  “Are you going to marry him?” Lana asks.

  A laugh explodes from Veronica. “Marry him? God, no. He’s just become … an ally. An ally in the day-to-day battles of life. Besides, as I think you’re aware, I am already married.”

  Lana stares at her and wonders if she’s looking at a new kind of cannibal, one who uses everybody up, who eats people from the inside. She wonders if it’s too late to erase all of Veronica. Make her disappear.

  Veronica is smiling. “You’ve got attitude, Lana, but you’re so young. You have a child’s eyes. You haven’t begun to see how actual adults really get by. You think I’m evil, I can see it in your eyes, but what I do is no different than what your beloved Whit does. He has his allies, too, the people he gets to do what he needs done.”

  Veronica lets this idea hang in the air. Lana wishes she could run from it and never hear what’s coming next, but she knows she will, and she stands where she is.

  “You, for example, are one of his allies,” Veronica says. “You take care of the house for him and”—she smiles coolly—“you take care of me for him.”

  Lana starts to disagree but isn’t sure of her footing. She doesn’t want to admit she does anything in particular for Whit.