Lacy Eye

by Jessica Treadway

  As at the restaurant with the Cahills, I knew there was no point in correcting her. The grand jury had not ordered her bound over for trial, but that was not the same as finding her innocent.

  “You sprayed that on there yourself, didn’t you?” I said to Cecilia. “To stir up drama for your story, because there isn’t any. Who else could it be?” I looked around us at the empty street.

  “Of course I didn’t.” She gave me a look that said she pitied the fact that I could actually think such a thing. “It might be some random Halloween prank. Or maybe it was him,” she added, nodding at Emmett Furth’s house.

  I spit out a curt “No comment,” before I hurried into the house. If I’d had a stone in my hand, I might have thrown it at Cecilia’s car as she pulled away.

  Dawn waited until we were back inside before she said, “You didn’t need to be like that,” and the fact that she didn’t express any anger made me feel more of my own.

  “Yes, I did. I did need to, Dawn.”

  She said, “But she’s an old friend of mine,” and I thought she was going to cry.

  It took everything in me not to remind her what Cecilia really was.

  In fifth grade, every student in Mrs. Karp’s music class had to sing “God Bless America” in front of the rest of the class. I couldn’t imagine sitting there and listening to twenty-one renditions of any song, let alone that one with all its opportunities for missed notes, but that’s what Mrs. Karp and every kid in Dawn’s class had to do on the Monday after the February break. I don’t know when Dawn practiced, or if she did, because we never heard her singing at home before that Monday night, when Mrs. Karp called to say that she understood Dawn was shy, but did we think we could convince her to sing the song in the school’s upcoming Spring Showcase?

  “Spring Showcase? I’m not familiar with that,” I said.

  “It’s the new name for the talent show,” she told me. “They don’t want kids who decide not to participate to feel untalented.” She went on to say that in class that day, Dawn had nailed the song, to the extent that many of the other kids sat with open mouths as they listened. When she finished, there was that stunned silence that usually precedes a standing ovation. “She shocked them. Shocked me,” the teacher said. “You know, I think it would be really good for her to perform. She’ll bring the house down. She’s gifted, Mrs. Schutt.”

  On the other end of the phone, I didn’t know what to say. Finally I managed to mumble, “You’re kidding,” and when I realized how negligent it made me sound as a parent, I thanked her and said I’d do what I could to talk Dawn into performing. When I told Joe about it that night, he expressed the same skepticism I felt. “Is this the teacher who drinks?” he said, and I told him no, that was the music teacher at the middle school.

  We went to Dawn’s room together and told her Mrs. Karp had called, and we asked her if she’d mind singing something for us. She blushed. “I can’t do it in front of people,” she said.

  But she’d done it in front of her whole class, we pointed out.

  “It was part of my grade. I had to.” Her voice tightened and I realized how stressful it must have been for her to do this. I could tell Joe understood it, too. I was going to leave it at that, and drop the idea of her signing up for the show, but Joe had different ideas, more in line with the music teacher’s. He told Dawn he understood how difficult it might be for her, but that he thought it would be a big step; if she could force herself through that anxiety and perform onstage, it would do wonders for her.

  I remember that this was the exact phrase he used—“It would do wonders for you.” I know he really believed it, and risked putting that pressure on her only because he wanted so badly for her to have the new and unfamiliar experience of succeeding at something, especially if it could be witnessed by the kids who made a habit of teasing her.

  I watched the moving complications in her face as she struggled with how to respond. She did not want to do anything onstage before an audience, that much was clear. And yet I knew she did not want to disappoint us. Finally, she said she’d think about it, and we left her to go to sleep. In the morning, at breakfast, she said she’d decided to give it a try. Iris started to say something, but I gave her a warning look. At school Dawn told Mrs. Karp to put her on the program, and the teacher called to thank us, saying she was thrilled.

  We waited to hear Dawn practice, but she never did. On the night of the concert, she let me curl her hair and zip up the new dress Iris had helped her pick out. Joe drove us all over to the school in silence as we took our cue from Dawn, who, it seemed, was too nervous to do her usual nattering. I dropped her off at the music room with the other kids, most of whom—including Cecilia Baugh, dressed in a black-spotted leotard for her jazz dance interpretation of “Eye of the Tiger”—did double takes in surprise at the sight of her. I pretended I didn’t notice, and tried not to make a big deal out of wishing Dawn luck before I left her behind (feeling her eyes bore into my back as I did so) to take my seat with Joe and Iris in the auditorium.

  It probably goes without saying that it was a disaster. It would have been better if she had just chickened out before she even got onto the stage, but as it was, she emerged in her assigned place on the program, after Graham Tompkins and Lyle Kroke performed the “Who’s on First” comedy routine. She walked to the microphone, and I felt my stomach constrict as the spotlight fell on her. I could tell by the way her bad eye twitched and flickered how scared she was. Mrs. Karp began playing the music on the piano, her big face beaming encouragement at Dawn. Dawn opened her mouth, and I held my breath waiting for the first note, but instead she turned and threw up, onto the floor of the stage behind her and her own dress. A murmur passed through the audience; I heard “Gross,” “Eew,” and “Poor girl.” Dawn rushed off the stage and out the exit, and I knew she’d be running toward the car. Joe began the grim passage out of our row, and Iris and I followed, but not before I caught sight of Cecilia Baugh behind the curtains at the side of the stage, her face showing disgust and a triumphant fascination. I knew they could never return to the friendship they’d had once, after that. Standing along the wall, Pam Furth tapped my arm and said, “Oh, dear, Hanna,” and I heard the tone of false sympathy in her voice. In the car, Dawn apologized to all of us, and even though we all (including Iris) said she had nothing to be sorry for, I knew we didn’t convince her.

  A few weeks later, Dawn came home one day looking uncharacteristically happy, and I felt wariness spread through my blood. At dinner she filled us in on the reason for her mood: Cecilia Baugh had invited her to a party.

  “She’s having it at Hot Wheels,” Dawn told us, her face so animated that for a moment she almost looked pretty. I smiled to encourage her to continue, even though I could feel a stitch starting in my side the way I did when I tried to run too fast with Abby—a warning to slow down or stop or, in this case, be cautious of my daughter’s exuberance.

  “Cecilia Baugh does not want you to come to a party,” Iris said to her sister, in the same emphatic tone she had begun using on all of us as soon as she hit puberty. “Dawn, you can’t be such a sucker when you get to middle school. You just can’t.” Though I knew she was speaking partly out of protectiveness and for Dawn’s own good, I knew it also embarrassed her to have a sister people considered a dunce. I shivered inside at the harshness of her message, as I could tell Dawn did.

  “And she’s not having a party at Hot Wheels. You know that’s a place for little kids. Like, little.” Iris put her hand out beside her chair and leveled it at about three feet. “This is a setup, Dodo.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Dawn said, lifting her chin in a feeble attempt at defiance.

  Joe’s eyes met mine, and I knew he wanted me to step in. When I answered him by looking away, he cleared his throat and said, “Are you sure, Dawn? Because Cecilia seems like she’s changed a little, to me. She wasn’t very nice after—” Mercifully, he stopped himself before mentioning the Spring Showcase f
iasco. “Why would she all of a sudden decide she wants to be friends again?”

  “Because she feels bad! She said so!” Dawn threw her napkin on the table, and for a moment I thought she would get up and leave, but instead she put her face between her hands and stared down at her plate. I saw her jaw trembling. “She knows she’s been a jerk. Now she just wants to go back to the way things were.”

  “I think it sounds great, honey,” I said. Around me I felt darts of disbelief and resentment coming from Joe and Iris. “It sounds like fun.”

  “All the popular kids are going to be there.” Having calmed herself down with this reminder, Dawn put her napkin back on her lap and began eating again.

  Of course, Joe and Iris had been right in their suspicions. Dawn told me the details later, when she could bear to talk about it, during one of our ritual bath-time discussions. But even before then I knew the truth, and on some level she must have known it, too, but like me, she chose to ignore her better judgment in favor of the wish that Cecilia Baugh really wanted to atone for her previous acts of unkindness. When I dropped her off at the rink, I asked her if she wanted me to wait for a minute, and when she said, “Why?” I realized there was no reason I could give her, so I drove away and watched her enter the building in my rearview mirror, feeling my heart miss a beat.

  The only parties being held at Hot Wheels that day were for a seven-year-old girl named Anna and a six-year-old boy named Jake. Shortly after she went inside and asked to be directed to Cecilia Baugh, Dawn heard herself being paged over the rink’s loudspeaker, and summoned to the front desk. She identified herself and was told she had a phone call. Later, when I asked her if she knew who it was going to be on the other end of the line, she told me no, and though it occurred to me that maybe she just felt too sheepish to admit that she’d known what was coming, I was afraid it was true—she’d picked up that phone completely unaware of what she was about to hear, despite the fact that she couldn’t find the party she’d been invited to.

  Of course, it was Cecilia. “We changed our minds, Upchuck,” she said, and Dawn, hearing other kids’ laughter in the background, understood finally that she should have listened to her father and her sister—it was all a setup. But she wasn’t fast enough to disconnect before she heard Cecilia add, “We decided not to have the party in a place nobody would be caught dead in after third grade, and we decided only to invite people who aren’t, like, total tards.” This line was followed by louder snickers from behind her. Then Cecilia said, “I can’t believe even you were stupid enough to actually go there, Ding-Dong”—before somebody urged her to “Hang up already,” and she did.

  Dawn didn’t ask if she could use the phone at the counter again, to call me to come get her, and she didn’t go to the pay phone in the corner. Instead she waited there for three hours, until the fictional party would have been over, and came outside to meet me at the time we had arranged. Even then, she didn’t tell me what had happened. I asked her how it had gone, and she told me it was fun—more fun than she’d expected. But her lips were shaking, and that was how I knew the truth.

  When we got home she went up to her room and shut the door, and I assumed she was taking a nap. That night at dinner, speaking with more energy than usual, she told us all about the party: how thirty of the most popular kids in her grade had been there, how roller-skating was actually a lot easier than she’d expected, how surprised she was that some of the kids she’d thought were the meanest were actually pretty nice.

  I should have just called her on it then. But I thought she’d feel less ashamed if she came to the conclusion by herself to tell us what really happened. “I’m glad you had a good time, honey,” I said.

  “Oh, my God.” Iris stood up and carried her plate to the kitchen, then grabbed the phone and went out to the garden. I knew that Joe would have liked to do something similar, but he didn’t let himself.

  Dawn looked down at her plate. “Can I be excused, please?” She smiled in both our directions, but couldn’t look at us.

  Joe and I sat without speaking for a minute or more, waiting until we heard the closing of her bedroom door. “How can you continue to do that, Hanna?” he asked, and immediately I felt defensive.

  “How can I do what?” But we both understood I was stalling.

  “Lacy eye,” he said as he rose from the table, using the words that had become a code between us. I wanted to tell him that wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t because I knew better. He put a hand on my shoulder, and though I knew he meant it as a sign of support, I shrugged it off and left the room so he wouldn’t see me cry.

  Before Cecilia brought it up during the conversation on our doorstep, it had been a long time since I’d thought about the night the tree house burned. Joe had built it for the girls when they were eleven and fourteen. When they were younger it would have been the perfect thing, but at that point they were too old—at least, Iris was. “You have to tell him, Mom,” she said, after Joe announced his plan. We’d all watched a movie one Friday night that featured kids who had a tree house in their backyard, and it put the idea in Joe’s head. Once an idea got in there, it was almost impossible to get out. Iris knew this as well as I did, yet she insisted I try.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to discourage him—he was too excited. And Dawn was, too, though I couldn’t tell if it was for her own sake or her father’s. Claire’s husband, Hugh, and Peter Cifforelli and Warren from across the street all offered to help, but Joe wanted to do it by himself. He bought a book of instructions and supplies from Home Depot, and spent an entire weekend banging wood into the maple tree on the line dividing our property from the Furths’. He told the girls the “unveiling” would be after dinner on Sunday, and he persuaded me to serve the spaghetti at four thirty, which let me know how much he had invested in this project and the girls’ reaction.

  I watched them both slow down and then stop as they approached the rope ladder hanging down the trunk. Remembering the movie that had inspired the project, I knew they thought they should be seeing a proper wooden stepladder leaned at just the right angle for them to scale without any effort. As it was, though Iris gamely began climbing and pretended she enjoyed the challenge, Dawn hung back and hesitated in following her sister. It occurred to me that she might be right in this; she was so uncoordinated that it didn’t seem it would take too much for her to lose her grip on the rope and fall backward onto the ground.

  Once Iris reached the top, she found another obstacle to her appreciation of her father’s gift. Instead of a wooden door with a window (the one in the movie had a pretty rainbow-colored sun catcher hanging on it), this tree house’s entryway was an old burlap blanket Joe had nailed in place. “I didn’t want to put a door in,” he told me, when he saw I had a question about it. “This way there’s ventilation, and they can never get stuck inside.”

  I’m ashamed to say I wondered if those were the real reasons, or if it was just too difficult for him with his limited carpentry skills to figure out how to fit a door. It’s kind of ugly, I wanted to say. Couldn’t he see that? On top of which, once you were inside the house, the heavy blanket made everything darker than it would have been otherwise. There was a small window on the back wall, but it was covered in plastic rather than glass, so you couldn’t see out clearly.

  The tree house in the movie had had carpeting, comfy beanbag chairs, and even its own little TV, on which the movie children played video games. There was a soft-light lamp on a table in the corner and a fan for when the weather got hot.

  Joe’s house had a bare plank floor and no electricity. When we were all standing inside and he held the blanket open so we could see better around us, the girls’ expressions were dubious, though they both tried to hide it for Joe’s sake. “Cool, Dad,” Iris said. She went to the plastic window and looked out, and I saw her lip tremble.

  “I love this!” Dawn put her arms out on either side and twirled herself around, and I had to catch her before she fell. “Just think of t
he things we can do up here!” It was a line Joe himself had used when he described to them his plans for the house. He envisioned kids playing board games and telling secrets. A space for rainy-day reading. They could even spend some nights out here if they wanted, he’d told them. Before construction, Iris had halfheartedly thought she might have an outdoor sleepover, but now I knew she was reconsidering; she was not a flashlight or sleep-on-a-wood-floor kind of girl.

  Only after we’d all navigated the ladder backward, down to the ground again, did I notice what Joe had painted over the burlap doorway, and I pointed it out to Iris and Dawn: FORT SCHUTT. Cool, Iris mumbled again.

  Joe didn’t seem to notice their lack of enthusiasm. Over the next few days, when they got home from school, I encouraged them to go out and play in the tree house, but there was always some reason for staying inside or going over to someone else’s. I admit I lied to Joe; when he got home and asked if they’d gone out there, I told him yes. But it was the end of the school year, I reminded him, and things were busy. They were doing final projects and studying for exams. I was sure, I said, that when summer came, we wouldn’t be able to get them to come down for meals. Of course I knew this wouldn’t happen, but it satisfied Joe in the short term.

  Summer came and went, and as I suspected, the tree house got used only a few times. Used a few times, at least, by the children it had been built for, and those were short, mercy visits: Iris and two of her softball teammates went up one day with a tube of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough and copies of the high school yearbook, planning which boys to stalk; Dawn and her friend Monica struggled up the ladder with a box of Monica’s model horses and then called me in to watch an impromptu round of jumps and dressage. In both cases, squadrons of daddy longlegs in the corner chased the girls out, and they tumbled recklessly from the tree with disgusted squeals.

  After they stopped using the house altogether, Emmett Furth claimed it as his own. I don’t know exactly when he started, but it was at the end of the summer, after his father moved out, that I noticed the sign over the door had been amended to read FART SCHUTT. One night I caught sight of him hopping down from the tree in the dark, and when I opened the back door and called, “Hey!” he only scurried fast into his own yard. Climbing up the rope ladder, I could smell the cigarette smoke that had been trapped inside the house, and when I pulled the blanket back I saw butts littering the floor, along with matchbooks from Pepito’s, candy wrappers, empty chip bags, soda and a few beer cans.