Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  “Come on, boy, give me a hand.” Again I scooped him up and felt him trembling in my arms, a soft whimpering coming from his throat. “Not a very tough guy, are you?” I said. I used my free hand to brace me as I clawed my way up, first grabbing a branch, then digging into a patch of exposed earth. The dog started to shake harder, then struggle in my arms, and I almost lost my balance, slipping back down, but I scrambled, digging my heels in, pulling myself with my free hand wherever there was a branch or a sapling trunk.

  The top was the most slippery because ice had formed a solid lip there that jutted out slightly and made it difficult to get over. As I felt along the ice, I knew that I would need two hands to get over the top. Bracing myself just below this icy lip, I tried to scoop the dog into both my hands and heave him over the edge. My feet slipped and I couldn’t get any leverage.

  Now I held him against my knees and shoved him up the side. He cried, then disappeared over the edge. A moment later he came back and peered down at me, a worried look in his eyes. “Stand back,” I told him. I got as close as I could to the lip, then reached across it as far as I could and, finally, I hoisted myself over the top.

  When we came up, I looked around. I knew I had to get to a house nearby and ask for help. At first I was disoriented, unsure of where the ravines had taken me, but as I looked around, I knew exactly where I was. I was on Laurel, and if I turned right it would take me to the bluffs and down to the lake.

  That’s where the Schoenfield house was. At the end of this street was where Nick and Margaret lived. Now I knew where I was going. I’d been going there all along.

  22

  “Let’s have a sleepover,” Margaret said. “Let’s camp out in the woods.” Some of the gang were hanging out in my playroom. The rec room was an idea of my father’s; he built it himself with his own two hands. Grace Cousins, who had bad breath and never stopped talking, was there and so was Maureen Hetherford, whose hair would turn stark white when she divorced her first husband years from now. Vicky sat at the bar, sipping a Coke.

  Lori Martin said, “That’s a great idea.” Lori was already set to organize things. “Let’s go home, get sleeping bags. What about food?”

  “Camp in the woods?” Grace Cousins, who was always chicken, said. “No way.”

  But the rest of us liked the idea. The best place to camp, and we knew it, was the small woodsy area behind my house. The rest of the Winonah woods were far from houses, but there were still a few acres behind my house, a small forest that sloped toward the bluffs. In the middle of it was a small clearing. It was close enough to my house that we could come back in if we got hungry or cold. Or scared.

  Everybody called home, checked with her parents. My father said, “Whatever makes you happy, Tess.” Lily told me to air out the sleeping bags because they’d been lying in a cold basement all winter long. Grace Cousins didn’t bother to check with hers because she wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping out of doors, and Vicky called Samantha Crawford because she was so nice and everyone liked her. It was a warm afternoon of early June and we agreed to meet back at my house at six o’clock.

  With my father I went to the store. We bought hot dogs, potato chips, soda, marshmallows, graham crackers, Hershey bars for s’mores. My father said he’d help us build a small campfire, but we’d have to put it out before we went to sleep. I knew how to put out a fire—you kicked dirt on it; that’s what you did. We could roast our hot dogs and marshmallows over it.

  On the way into the woods we collected roasting sticks. I put a box of matches in my pocket and my father came with us, leading the way. In the clearing, with a small spade he brought, he dug a ditch. He’d brought some charcoal and he put it on the bottom. Then we piled on twigs and leaves. Some of us went and looked for logs. When my father had the fire going, he was ready to leave. I wanted him to leave so I could be with my friends. It was embarrassing that he was here at all. “Is there anything else you girls will need?” he asked and we told him no, but I saw in his eyes there was something uncertain, like a little bit of fear. He didn’t want to leave us here.

  “Well, if there is, just come back to the house. All right, Tess? If you girls need anything, you come home.”

  My father wandered off, clomping back the few hundred yards through the woods. His head was bent as if he was sad and thought he’d never see me again. Quickly we spread out our sleeping bags, everyone fighting for her space. Samantha wanted to be near Lori, but I wanted to be near Vicky and Lori did too. Nobody wanted to be near Margaret but somehow she wound up with her sleeping bag on one side of me. I made a face at Vicky, who shrugged, then moved her bag to the other side of mine.

  With our roasting sticks we sat on logs and roasted hot dogs, marshmallows. We made s’mores with chocolate and graham crackers. We sat until it was dark, eating and telling jokes about boys. Everyone said who they liked and who they thought liked them. Then Lori Martin said, “Let’s share secrets!” And Maureen, who always went along with Lori said, “Yes, let’s share secrets.”

  We squealed and said we didn’t want to, but Lori said it would be fun and we’d all get closer. We’d be better friends after that. Samantha Crawford told that she had borrowed some of her sister’s clothes and worn them without telling her, which hardly seemed like a secret at all, especially since the Crawfords owned the only clothing store in town and Samantha was always loaning everybody her clothes anyway. Then Lori, who we’d always thought of as being the good citizen, told us that she’d stolen money from her mother’s drawer and that seemed like a crime and something that should be kept a secret. It didn’t seem like something Lori would do and we were quiet for a while, even after she added that later she confessed and paid her mother back.

  Vicky said her mother kept this weird rubber disk in her drawer by her bed and Vicky and Ginger Klein got caught playing catch with it one day. Then Ginger told us that her parents made gross noises in their bed and she listened through the wall.

  Margaret said she had one, but hers was such a big secret she couldn’t tell, not to any of us, that’s how big it was. We begged her, we pleaded, but she said no. Her secret was just that big. I didn’t have a secret. I’d never had one and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with a single real secret. I couldn’t even make one up. This bothered me a great deal that night as we sat around the campfire; that I had nothing I’d been holding on to, nothing I couldn’t give away.

  We were sitting, pondering our secrets or the lack of them, and suddenly Margaret jumped up and whipped off her shirt. “Let’s be Indians,” she said. “Let’s dance around the fire.” She began to whirl in a circle, her feet flying off the ground. With her hand over her mouth she whooped like an Indian. Her breasts were tiny buds, but by the light of the fire they bobbed up and down. In her underwear alone she twirled, her hair catching the light of the fire, its blue blackness like dark water reflecting the moon.

  Her frenzied feet tapped as she reached for each of us, grabbing us by the hands. “Come on,” she said. “Come on!” She pulled Samantha up and Samantha, who was always shy and cried at the slightest thing, whipped off her T-shirt. Her breasts weren’t even formed. They were there flat on her chest, but she danced, pulling up Vicky. Then she reached for me. Now we were all whooping, whirling, bare-chested, circling our fading fire, our voices rising in the light of the moon.

  I saw it only when I paused, looking at them. A shape or a shadow lurking in the trees. Now moving among them it was white, but barely. A specter moving among us, slipping in and out among the trees. “Look,” I said, pointing, “what’s that?” I’d heard about the ghost woman, bearer of Indian braves, whose heart was made of flint. She was there in white, darting, watching us from between the trees. We had disturbed her resting spirit with our brazen and disrespectful dance.

  Now I saw the spectral form the ghost of Winonah peering at us from among the trees. “Stop,” I told them. Their dancing ceased slowly, one at a time, as they paused and gazed where I was pointin
g. Suddenly hands went up to cover bare chests. They saw it too—the woman in white, watching us as we stood there frozen, naked, and scared.

  Scrambling for our shirts, we dressed. We were screaming, shouting. Then we watched in silence for a moment as the apparition moved between the trees. “It’s a person in a sheet,” Lori said, but the rest of us trembled. Beside me Margaret cried, “I want my daddy; I want my daddy.” There was a strange keen to her cry, a howl almost. I had never heard anything like it before.

  “Shush,” I told her. “Be quiet,” I told them all.

  I kicked dirt into the fire, putting it out. We hid our faces in our sleeping bags. When we looked up again, we saw that the spirit—whatever it was—was receding, disappearing in the direction of my house. A few days later Jeb would ask me what all that commotion was in the woods and if we’d slept all right.

  Now as we lay in our sleeping bags, Margaret sidled up to me. “Tess,” she whispered into my ear, “I can’t sleep.”

  I always got stuck, I thought. I always got stuck with her. “Here,” I said, unzipping my bag, “crawl in with me.”

  We zipped our bags together and I felt her long legs wrapping themselves around me, and her thick, unreal hair tumbling across my shoulders like a blanket.

  “I want my daddy,” she said again, trembling. Then she sobbed and sobbed. It was an otherworldly sob that came from deep inside of her and its desperation startled me. As she cried I realized that her father hadn’t come and taken her away like she’d said he would. I stroked her cheek, told her that everything would be all right. Before I knew it, Margaret was asleep. I felt her warm breath on my neck as I peered into the woods, thinking that the specter would reveal itself again.

  * * *

  Step on a crack, you break your mother’s back. Step on a dime, you break your mother’s spine. It was that same June, just days later as I wandered through the town, playing the game I knew only too well. I avoided the cracks, fearing what would happen if I stepped on them.

  I didn’t see the storm clouds as I headed toward the tracks. Stop, Tess, I should have told myself. Don’t go there. But I did not stop. I kept going, one foot at a time. I followed the street, across the road, under the trestle. I wanted to climb up on the tracks, go to the turnabout, but charcoal clouds gathered above me. The wind rose, dust devils spun at my heels. A storm had suddenly come upon me. The sky turned black as night and I couldn’t see the cracks in the pavement anymore.

  Lightning crashed overhead and I was frightened. I could run home, but I’d never make it. But if I dashed under the trestle, up the street, there, just ahead, not five minutes away, was Margaret’s house. Not the one over the store but the one she moved into not so far from mine. Just under the trestle on the other side of the tracks. I would be safe there, I told myself. I raced the storm past houses with broken-down porches, automobile parts on the front lawns.

  Then I reached the door. It was all like a nursery rhyme to me. Knock, knock. Who’s there? It’s me. Tess. Thunder cracked, lightning sliced through the sky.

  Slowly Margaret opened the door. The smile on her face turned to a look of surprise. I heard voices, voices behind her, and one was a woman’s laugh and the other the big, noisy laugh of a man. He had a big, boisterous voice that took up the whole room. Margaret stepped aside, making room for me to pass, and I walked in, shaking the rain from my hair.

  My father was sitting in the living room. He had one arm draped across the sofa, feet resting on the coffee table as if he lived there. Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Tessie,” he said, “you’re all wet. Did you get caught in the storm?” He was up, patting my hair. “Clarice wanted help with her insurance,” he said, drying me off with his hand. “But I think we’re about finished now, aren’t we?”

  Clarice nodded her head, smiling at me. “Would you like some cookies, Tess? Would you like a dry shirt?”

  I was thinking about what day it was. How it was Thursday afternoon. It was early for him to be in Winonah. My father wasn’t due home until suppertime. “Come on, Tessie,” he said, putting his arm firmly around my shoulder, “I’ll drive you home.”

  In the car my father tapped his fingers nervously on the wheel. He drove north toward the high school, taking the long way around. We drove in silence until he turned to me with his gray eyes and said, “Listen, no point mentioning this to your mother. You know how she is.” Actually, I didn’t know how she was but then he reached across, patting me on the arm. “Let’s just keep it between you and me, okay, pal?”

  “Sure, Dad, no problem.”

  “That’s my Squirrel,” he said, landing a fake punch on my jaw. As we drove home, I felt a sour feeling in my stomach, as if I’d eaten something that had gone bad. But it didn’t bother me as much as it should have because now I had something the other girls had. I had a secret too.

  23

  I’m not sure what I looked like with a half-frozen dog in my arms as I made my way into the small courtyard and rang the bell. I waited, but no one came. I thought I would freeze on their doorstep when at last I heard footsteps coming slowly to the door. The door was opened and a girl stood there.

  She was perhaps nine or ten and she looked as glum as any child I’d ever seen. She had dark circles under her eyes, as she had in the picture Nick had showed me, and her hair was a stringy mess. At first I thought she was ill or even disabled, but she spoke in a clear, distinct voice, a little old for her years. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, is your mother home?”

  The girl hesitated. Then she shook her head. “No, she went to the store.”

  “Well, could I use your bathroom and your phone? We’ve had a small accident. The dog is very cold and so am I.”

  The child hesitated again but it didn’t seem as if she was afraid to let a stranger into the house. I felt more as if I was intruding on her, imposing on her solitude. As if she was busy with something and didn’t want to be disturbed. But what solitude could a child need at this age? I had no idea, but I asked once again. “I just have to make a phone call. We’ve been trapped in the ravines. And if I could use the bathroom…”

  Looking somewhat annoyed, she flung the door open. “Do you have a towel? So I can wrap the dog?” The girl left and came back with a red and blue beach towel with a giant bear on it. I took off my boots and my feet burned.

  “Okay.” I turned to the girl. “My name is Tess. I went to school with your parents and I need to use the phone.” She looked at me as if I were from Mars and then pointed to a powder room in the hallway and into the kitchen for the phone. “Are you home alone?” She nodded, then disappeared into the back of the house.

  I went into the bathroom first, where I thought I’d burst. It was all pink with a powdery smell, fluffy pink towels just for guests. I could barely get my fingers to work as I unzipped my pants. The toilet seat was cold and the hot stream of urine that seemed to go on forever burned my thighs. Then I ran my hands under hot water for a long time.

  When I came out, the girl was nowhere to be seen so I made my way into the kitchen for the phone. The kitchen was messy, dishes piled in the sink, but there was lots of counter space. Shiny copper pots that hung overhead looked as if they’d never been used. I didn’t have Vicky’s work number with me and tried to remember the name of the travel agency she worked for, but couldn’t. There were North Shore Yellow Pages tucked under the phone, so I looked under “Travel.” Six were listed in the area. I phoned the first one but Vicky didn’t work there. I tried another number and she didn’t work there either. I was still shivering, my teeth chattering, and I decided to warm up before I tried again.

  I walked in my stocking feet into the sunken living room. The house was a sprawling white ranch with lots of windows and wings jutting off. A small Japanese courtyard opened onto the living room. The large picture window of the living room looked over the lake.

  The living room was furnished impeccably in whites and grays, but it was oddly devoid of personal posses
sions. There were no pictures, no mementos, except for one picture of Nick’s father, a football he was about to hurl held in his hand, eyes set dead ahead. Except for that picture, the living room looked as if it were about to be photographed for Architectural Digest, not a place where people actually lived.

  I couldn’t help but think how far Margaret had come from that apartment above Santini’s Liquor and that she had accomplished exactly what she’d set out to do. It’s true I lived in a house by the sea, but it was on a spit of questionable terrain, badly in need of repairs, and I was barely making ends meet as it was. Part of me was filled with envy. And part of me was filled with surprise. I couldn’t imagine how Margaret Blair had come this far.

  I was standing in her living room in my stocking feet and Vicky’s dog lying on a beach towel in the entranceway when Margaret came walking in. She was dressed in black stretch pants, a bulky red sweater, a small parcel in her arms. Her high black leather boots with stiletto heels clicked on the marble. Thick eyeliner rimmed her eyes. She moved stiffly, like a toy soldier, crossing the room. I wondered if she had been drinking.

  She saw me before she was entirely in the door and, dropping her parcel, she ran to me. “Tess, my God, what are you doing here? And whose dog is this?” She looked at Liberty, curled up asleep on the beach towel.

  “It’s a long story. I had a little accident down in the ravines. Got down but I couldn’t get up.”

  “The ravines? I haven’t been down there in years.” She gave me a look. “You did?” Her daughter stood in the doorway now and gave a little shrug. “It’s okay, Danielle,” her mother said. “This is an old friend.”