“The parents would worry if we didn’t tell them.”
“You could always phone them once you’re there,” Annie responds with a shrug. “Seems like you’re making a pretty big deal out of a pretty small one.”
The thick, oily stars of Starry Night bulge from their canvas like a handful of gooey butterscotch candies. Tempting.
“Anyway, I’m thirsty, I need a cup of coffee.” Annie touches her fingers to her neck, hopping back and forth on her feet in the graceless, childish way that has grown familiar to me. Slsp, slsp goes her loose shoe strap, a sound that troubles me because it is a falling-apart noise, like a broken muffler or a leaky faucet. “I’m off to the cafeteria. If there’s time, you should take a look at the iron sculpture show on the third floor.” She begins to glide away.
“Wait, Annie …”
She does not turn around. I watch her breeze through the crowd, her long blue skirt flowing out behind her like a peel of night sky.
After she’s gone, I turn to my sister. “Listen, Geneva, you realize we need to get the parents’ permission to go away.”
“Please don’t ask them, please! You’re grounded, remember? They’ll never let us go. Don’t ruin it by asking, we can take care of ourselves, please—”
“Stop whining, it makes it harder for me to figure out what to do. Just simmer down until I think of a plan. Deal?”
Geneva sighs, but nods. “Deal.”
We step hesitantly around the gallery while we wait for Annie to return from her coffee break. “Annie didn’t look so good today,” Geneva finally volunteers.
“Yeah, I noticed. Like she has a flu,” I say.
“Or she’s just tired,” Geneva muses.
“Well, she definitely gets tired of us,” I admit. “Like that day she just abandoned us in Soho. She is not the best example of a guardian.”
“She’s not any worse example than you,” Geneva contests. “You’re both alike, come to think of it. Like how you traded your school coat, and Louis coming over, and you yelling at Mom. I could imagine Annie doing all those things when she was a kid.”
“I don’t want to be a bad example for you,” I say honestly.
“Oh, I like when people are bad examples,” Geneva assures me.
We roam through the different rooms, then move up to the third floor where we stare at artwork until our eyes are stunned by colors and figures.
Then I look at Geneva; we are thinking the same thing. “She’s not coming back,” I say. “The old Annie disappearing act. Let’s go before the parents get home and find out we’re not there.”
“I tried calling you girls this afternoon,” Dad says absently that night at dinner. He reaches for a bowl of creamed parsnips and lands a spoonful onto his plate. “The Deli does these rather well, I think,” he says to Mom.
“Sixth sense with the garlic,” Mom adds. They detour into a tranquil discussion about their various favorite Deli specialties, and I think Dad has forgotten about trying to call home, but like a reliable boat he tacks back on course and says, in the same casual voice, “Didn’t you hear the phone, Holland? When I rang earlier today?”
My heart upshifts a speed. “No, but we were here. I don’t know how that happened.”
“Because we were in the cellar,” Geneva says. “Looking for old pottery crocks. They make good paint mixers as long as there’s no hole in the bottom. But remember, Holland, when I thought I heard the phone? Remember when I said, ‘Do you hear the phone ringing?’”
“Yep, and you were right. I couldn’t hear a thing, but it was probably you calling, Dad.”
We spread on lies like frosting, adding smiles and politeness for extra sweetness.
“Wasn’t Annie around again today? She could have picked up the phone.” Mom’s voice is more insistent than Dad’s as she takes the helm of the questioning.
“She was here yesterday but not today,” Geneva says. “She’s really busy. But she lets us work on the mural when she isn’t here. We’re her apprentices.”
“She does a good job, too,” I say. “She’s very professional and responsible.”
“I’m sure she is.” Dad looks at Mom.
“Annie can’t be allowed too much responsibility,” Mom says pointedly.
“Free artistic rein has its benefits,” Dad responds. “And there has been no damage as of yet, Lydia.”
They are talking in a parent code. Geneva senses it, too.
“Have you both met Annie?” she blurts out.
“Certainly,” Dad says. “A charming young person. Very level-headed.”
“A good example, isn’t that what you said, Quentin?” Mom asks in a stagy voice. “You said she would be a good role model for our girls.”
I feel the smothered meaning in their words and I am irritated at being excluded.
The sudden chime of the doorbell causes us all to flinch.
“Speaking of which,” Mom says with a smile, “we have guests tonight.”
Dad jumps up from his seat. “Hail, hail,” he says. “The Hills are here!” He claps his hands and leaves the dining room to answer the door.
“You’re not serious,” I begin. Mom’s smile wilts.
“Oh, chin up,” she says, her hands twiddling her necklace. “I won’t embarrass you, Holland. Trust me.” She lifts her eyes from me to the doorway “Well, hello, all!”
“Lydia, oh, Lydia!” Mr. Hill’s voice booms Mom’s name in song.
I do not turn around, even when I hear Aaron Hill say, “Hey, Holland.”
Instead, I stare straight into my plate, gritting my teeth together, wondering what words will come out if I do trust myself to speak.
“Hey, Geneva,” Aaron says. “We brought cake.”
“Why don’t the old folks separate into the living room?” Dad says. “Who would like tea?”
Geneva rolls her eyes up at the ceiling. I stand.
“Hi, Aaron.” Be polite. It’s not his fault. “I’m not feeling very well. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs.”
“How’s school, Aaron? How’s fencing?” Geneva asks, trying to distract him on my account. “What flavor cake did you bring?”
“Uh, fine. Uh, lemon.” Aaron’s head bobs from Geneva to me and back again. He is wearing a coat and tie, and his hair is beginning to bounce out of its damp combing. It is easy to see from his obedient expression why Bishop Brown kids call him Aaron the Pious. I feel sorry for him, but not enough to want to stick around and be friendly.
“’Scuse me.” I slide past Aaron and pound up the stairs to my bedroom, where I sit, waiting, on the edge of my bed, squeezing my knees in my hands. How unfair and controlling of the parents to do this, to deliver a boyfriend straight to the front door, packaged and tied like the box of lemon cake he walked in with.
After a few minutes I hear the brisk tap of Mom’s heels up the stairs.
If you don’t let yourself get talked into going downstairs, then you should … you better … you have to … I can’t even think of what to bet myself.
“Bets don’t really work anyway,” I mutter just as Mom opens the door.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“I said, I wish you would knock before you barge in my room.”
Mom folds her arms across her chest and leans forward over them. The position makes her body appear disfigured, as if she were a statue that had been broken and reglued crooked. “As long as we’re making wish lists, then I wish you would stop being rude and come downstairs to entertain our guests.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“You were fine a few minutes ago. You ate all your dinner.”
“Aaron Hill must have made me sick, then.” I force myself to look into Mom’s eyes.
“What is the matter with you, Holland? Why are you acting so childish?”
“You never even gave Louis a chance.”
“This has nothing to do with Louis. This is about being polite to the Hills.”
“If you like Aaron
so much, then you go out with him.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not saying you ought to go out with Aaron. My only thought was that here’s this young man, a dear friend of yours from childhood—maybe you don’t remember but Angie and I do—and if you stopped being so stubborn for a minute—”
“Did you ever meet Elizabeth’s boyfriend?” I ask. Mom steps back, closer to the door.
“Oh, Holland, you do choose your moments. You’re as churlish as Geneva these days.”
“Didn’t she have boyfriends? Did you pick them out? She was my big sister. I have a right to know.”
My mother sighs and raises a hand to her face, using her thumb and forefinger to smooth out the waxed arcs of her eyebrows, as if by doing so she can fix her expression into a state of unfurrowed composure. “We will talk about Elizabeth later if you like, but I am simply not in the mood for this while our guests are downstairs.”
“Your guests, you mean.”
Mom takes a steadying breath. “First losing your school jacket, then this business with that boy, Louis, in your room no less, and I know you and your sister weren’t here today after school. What has gotten into you lately? Originally your father’s and my position with Annie was that it would be helpful for you girls somehow, but the situation obviously is not coming right.”
“What position? What situation?”
“Oh, please. This kitchen, the painting, it’s all pure indulgence. Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck?”
I picture Mom, sitting cross-legged and frowning in a farmer’s turnip truck.
“Why are you smirking at me?” she asks.
“I wasn’t smirking.”
“What is happening to you?” Mom asks softly. “Where is the sweet and loving girl I know, who takes care of herself and her sister? What happened to her?”
“I am taking care of us!” I say, and although Mom glances automatically at the door to make sure it is closed, I do not lower my voice. “I’m just taking care of us in a different way now!”
“I see,” she says. “You don’t think Dad and I know what we’re doing, that’s it? You’re trying to make us feel guilty because we both work? Because we can’t be home with you girls every minute of the day?”
“You know that’s not it. I’m proud of Dad’s and your jobs.”
“Then make me proud tonight. Come downstairs to say hello to the Hills, who are dear old friends of ours.”
There is no way for me to explain why I cannot go downstairs and entertain Aaron Hill. I can’t find the words to bridge the distance between Mom and me, and so I am silent.
“I take it you won’t be coming down, will you?” she says finally.
I shake my head.
“Well, I hope you can rest easy with this behavior on your conscience, Holland.” Mom’s voice is considerably chilled. “Because I know I couldn’t.”
“You never told me his name.”
“Whose name?”
“Elizabeth’s boyfriend. What was his name?”
“He went to Bishop Brown.” Mom keeps her voice cool and composed, although I am sure the question disturbs her. “I don’t know where he is these days. He lost touch with us not long after. His name was William.”
“William,” I repeat. She nods and for a second I wonder how my mother sees me, my face puckered and glaring, my clenched fists. I doubt I’ll ever know what emotions lie behind her smoothed eyebrows and balanced voice.
“We’ll talk later,” she says.
I think I will cry once she closes the door and I hear her shoes clicking down the stairs. But once she is gone, I do not feel like crying at all. In fact, I feel light-headed, almost joyful. I lie down on my bed and my fingers find the envelope tucked under my pillow. I close my eyes and picture an immense warm blue sky, and the image is a shock of freedom.
nine
saint jude
I SIT ON THE roof, waiting. The night air is chilly, there are no stars, and the moon is quilted under layers of clouds.
When I saw Louis at the vendor this morning, my problems uncorked, releasing a flood of talk I was not sure I wanted to share. With my eyes on Geneva, who walked ahead of us making wide circles around the pigeons she so detests, I began with the story of the other Shepards and ended by telling Louis about the plane tickets under my pillow. My speech was two avenue blocks long, but Louis was a listening, sympathetic audience.
“Let me come over and see you tonight,” he said.
“Except you’re indefinitely banned from my house.”
“You got a roof and a way to get up?”
I nodded. “There’s a fire ladder.”
“Done. Be on the roof at eight and watch for me. We can hang out together, in private.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? Won’t you be riding the subway awfully late?”
“No, I’ll just sleep over at my uncle Pete’s. He lives in Chelsea.” Louis made a fist and tapped it against my nose. “See you.”
He lets me know he’s here by throwing something at the streetlight in front of our house. I lean over the tarpaulin-tacked wall and spy his shadow.
“Psst! I’m up here.”
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel!” Louis talks so loud that my stomach tenses, and I cross my fingers against anybody inside the house hearing us.
“You’re an outlaw in this town,” I say when Louis swings up over the wall. “Charged with the crime of being in my bedroom last week.”
“Of kissing you in your bedroom last week,” Louis corrects. His knees brush against mine as he slides next to me. Hearing him say the word kissing makes me look away.
“So Aaron the Pious is allowed in the house, and I’m lower than a roach or something.” He smiles and leans back, his laced fingers making a hammock to hold his head. “Don’t tell your mom, but once a house gets roaches, there’s no getting rid of them.”
I used to think I would never be able to come up with more than a dozen original words to say to Louis Littlebird, but we talk for a long time. There is something about Louis’s voice, although it is hardly familiar, that lets me loosen the wrappings I hold around my outside self.
It is not just me talking, either. Louis tells me things: about how last year he and his sister took their old dog, Rosie, to the vet and how he held her and hugged her while the vet gave Rosie the shot to put her to sleep, and how he cried for three days. We talk about Matthew versus Geneva, and I have to admit that Matthew’s biting sounds like a worse problem than Geneva’s wild dreams, although Louis is stumped when I tell him that Geneva has threatened to cut off her own tongue if we don’t get to go to Saint Germaine.
“I think she stole the concept from Van Gogh,” I explain. “She sort of likes to talk about things that also make her sick.”
Louis laughs. “A mute sister isn’t the worst punishment in the world. If Mattie shut up for more than five minutes I’d consider it a blessed miracle.” His face becomes more serious. “You’re going, aren’t you? To Saint Germaine?”
“It feels funny to say yes. It breaks a lot of rules. I’m not honoring my mom and dad’s wishes, I’m lying, I’m stealing.”
“Come on, you aren’t stealing anything. It’s only a matter of time before someone admits to buying those tickets for you.”
“I guess.” In the week I have grown to know him, I have had to recategorize Louis from the stranger of my daydreams into reality, and even his physical appearance has altered from the shift. His eyes, which at first had seemed so aloof, are eyes that cried over his dog. The hands he uses to pin wrestling opponents also know how to give his mom neck rubs.
“Besides, it seems like you two can pretty much take care of yourselves. I mean, when I saw your mom that day, no offense but I thought she was your grandmother,” Louis says. “She looked so flimsy, like she’d crumble into dust if I slammed the door too hard. Tonight at dinner, I asked my mom what she would do if three of her own kids were, you know, were gone, just like that. She said it’s the kind of tragedy that’s tou
ghest on the parents. She said men in white coats would have to carry her away.”
“My mom’s strong, even if she doesn’t look it,” I say. “She’s a survivor. That doesn’t mean that on the inside she isn’t grieving. It’s only that she has a different way—”
“Stop right there, because I didn’t mean to get you uptight, okay?”
“She’s not crazy, you know. Neither of them is crazy. They’re regular parents, maybe quieter and older, maybe a little more cautious—”
“Hey, I’m sorry!” Louis didn’t mean to speak so loud; now his voice sinks into a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
We are both quiet, searching for the right thing to say. “There’s this tour that goes past our house every Saturday,” I begin after a moment. “Over the years, the guides have changed, but the tour always ends with the same old story, about how some old mayor of New York’s mistress lived in our house and how sometimes you can see the mayor’s ghost creeping down our front steps. It’s the highlight of the tour. No one pays attention to the other facts, like that our street is crooked because it used to be a cow path, or that it’s one of the only houses in the Village with a cellar. It’s the ghost story that grabs them. They love it.” I sigh, linking my arms around my knees like a basket handle to hold myself. “And that’s what’s wrong with our family.”
“Wow, you lost me,” Louis says. “What does some mayor’s ghost have to do with anything?”
“Because I’m a ghost story, too,” I say. “Geneva and me both. And our story is so awful that it crowds out everything else about us. Whatever else Geneva and I are—a good tennis player or an artist—has been swallowed up by our haunting. And you know the worst part? We never even knew them. We never shared their history. We live inside our very own haunted house, and we have no idea who the ghosts are, any more than we can remember the mayor and his mistress.”
“Yeah,” Louis says. He reaches his arm around my neck, and his fingers are warm, kneading my skin. “I get what you mean. Even my mom had heard the story of your family. My oldest brother, Francis, was three grades under your brother John. Mom said they were on the debate team together, and once she watched them debate against Xavier. I asked if she remembered him, and she told me your brother had a loud debating voice, one of the only people she could hear from where she was sitting in the back row because she was pregnant and liked to be near the exit.”
Other Shepards Page 9