by Jenny Goebel
“Bernie?”
I flinched when Michael spoke my name.
“Are you okay?”
My surprise quickly turned to anger. “Michael Romano!” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”
Michael shrugged. Looking not at all shamefaced, he took a seat beside me on the bench.
I inched away from him. “How dare you spy on me!”
“Like you would never spy on anyone? Not even Mr. Stein?”
I huffed and looked the other direction.
Michael looked around, too, finally resting his eyes on the dates on my family’s marker. “How’s your mom doing?” he said softly, after a spell. Like I said before, Michael’s always poking himself into other people’s business.
I thought about lying to him, but he’d been at my house just a few hours before, and Mama had been as scarce as always. He had to have noticed, and I was pretty sure he’d know if I didn’t say something that at least resembled the truth. “Not good.” I sighed. “It’s been weeks since she’s come out of that tomb of hers.” More like months, I thought to myself.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. He sounded like he meant it. “Maybe she’ll be better after, you know …”
I looked back at the dates now, too, and like Michael, focused on the one just a few weeks away. But I knew better than to hope. Hope was something that almost never came through for my family. “Yeah, maybe,” I said, not wanting to think about Thomas. But with his grave marker staring us in the face, his death was hard to ignore. I swallowed hard and shook my head; it was a trick I’d learned to help keep back the tears.
Michael slid closer to me on the bench. Close enough that his arm was touching mine and his fine, dark hairs tickled the skin on my own arm. I felt it again. What I’d felt at his home. Warmth.
“He was two months old,” I blurted out. Maybe I needed a distraction from whatever it was Michael was making me feel, or maybe I just had too much piling up inside. I had to let some of it loose. I might burst if I didn’t. “My mama wanted a house full of children. Instead, she got me,” I said, and then laughed without any humor behind it.
Michael didn’t laugh. He just waited for me to go on.
I opened my mouth again, and even more leaked out. “Right after my first birthday, Mimi and Grandpa Morrison moved out to the carriage house thinking they’d make room in the main house for another baby,” I explained. “Years went by, but no baby came. That’s when Mama started to get sad. Then Grandpa died and Mimi moved back in with us. Alone.”
Michael looked at the marker again, this time at the dates beneath my grandfather’s name. “How’d your grandpa die?”
I shrugged. “Mimi said it was a combination of old age and too much bacon.”
“Oh,” Michael said. He squirmed a little but stayed put. Most boys I knew would’ve come up with excuses and taken off already, but not Michael.
“I was pretty young. Don’t hardly remember it happening.”
Michael turned his face back toward mine. “And your brother?” he asked hesitantly.
I made myself swallow again and pushed against the sob bubbling in my throat. “After Grandpa passed away, Mama kept trying to get pregnant. It even happened a few times, but they didn’t take. I always knew when she’d lost another baby, ’cause she’d stay in bed, crying like she does now.”
Michael dropped his eyes from mine and looked down at the grass.
“Mama would come out of her room when the tears ran dry, and for a while, she’d pretend like nothing was wrong. But I knew something was missing. I knew I wasn’t enough to keep her happy. You know what I mean?”
A weak smile blossomed on Michael’s lips — an “I’m sorry” without the words. I’d forgotten he had three brothers. He couldn’t possibly understand.
“Anyway,” I said. “When she finally got pregnant with Thomas, she stopped crying, and she didn’t sit in her room all day.” I couldn’t believe I was saying all this (to Michael Romano of all people!), but I didn’t stop. Sitting in the cemetery — all too close to the tiny coffin — made it impossible to tuck it away, back to a safe, rarely visited corner of my heart.
“Mama was amazing after Thomas was born,” I said. “She sang these silly songs while she folded laundry and danced when she filled Thomas’s bottles.”
The sob in my throat began to taste sour with guilt as I remembered those precious few weeks. I didn’t tell Michael how jealous I’d been that Thomas could turn my mama into this happy person when I couldn’t. How her delight with each coo and goofy grin had felt like an insult … even though I knew it shouldn’t. Nor did I tell Michael the dark fear I had. The fear that some small part of me, unsaintly me, had wanted the terrible thing that happened next.
I took in a big gulp of air, trying to calm myself, or maybe shut myself up, but I didn’t succeed at either. “Then, about a year ago …” I nodded at the headstone and continued. “When Mama went to wake Thomas from his nap, she started whimpering and moaning, and she didn’t stop … Hasn’t really ever since.” I paused for a second and then added, “It happens sometimes, babies not waking up.”
I risked a glance at Michael’s face. He looked like, for once in his life, he didn’t know what to say. To him, the cemetery was probably just a spooky place to avoid on Halloween. Not a place to visit loved ones. Not a place that punched you hard in the gut and then apologized with peace, quiet, and the sweet smell of grass. No. Right about now, Michael was probably wishing he’d never followed me here. And I was starting to feel glad he had. I felt lighter somehow. I’d said a lot, and it was nice of him to listen.
I moved my face closer to his and stared until he looked me in the eye. Side by side like we were, our noses were nearly rubbing. I whispered. “Do you think there’s any point, Michael? I mean, why are we bothering with Mr. Stein at all? What difference is it gonna make? We can’t prove anything. And we can’t stop him … or Death … or whatever this is.” I dropped my gaze to the wild blades of grass growing like vines around the legs of the cement bench. The ones the mower couldn’t reach.
“Maybe we can’t,” Michael said, and I lifted my eyes back to meet his.
“But maybe we can,” he added. “At least, I think we should give it a shot. Don’t you?”
I thought about that for a moment and then nodded my head.
Then another thought occurred to me. “Why are you helping me?” I asked. It wasn’t like Michael had a madman creating portraits, or signs of death — whatever they were — in his backyard. If he wanted, Michael could leave me alone and go about his summer without giving it a second thought.
Michael gave me a funny smile. A crooked smile. And the way his eyes sparkled, despite their dark color, made my stomach lurch. Then, before I knew what was happening, he was bringing his face in even closer to mine.
My wanting heart gave a quick flutter. My stomach flip-flopped again. I started to lean in slightly, too. My own eyelids were half closed before I finally came to my senses and pushed him away. I pushed him hard — probably a lot harder than he deserved. Michael landed with a soft thud on the ground behind the bench, and his eyes popped open.
“Disgusting!” I said. “Did you just try to kiss me?”
“Umm … Yes?” Michael said.
“Are. You. Kidding. Me. Michael Romano? In a cemetery? What’s wrong with you? I’m thankful for your help and all, but I do not want to kiss you. Got it?”
Michael looked down in his lap. “Okay.”
“Ugh,” I mumbled, and then said, “I guess I should thank you.”
“What for?” Michael asked.
“For reminding me why I don’t like you.”
Michael leaned back on the grass where he’d fallen, crossed his legs, and pulled his hands behind his monstrous head like a pillow.
I shook my own head, and then added another “disgusting” for good measure. But this time, what was barely a giggle slipped out with it. I pinched my lips tightly
together, but it was too late. Michael had heard the giggle and the good humor behind it. He smiled. I turned away quickly so that my own thin smile was hidden as I walked away.
AFTER ANOTHER NIGHT OF FRIGHT-FILLED DREAMS, AND after I’d shooed Michael out of the house (he’d arrived in time again for breakfast, like a stray cat looking for milk), Sara Fuller showed up in our den. Sam Fuller’s daughter was about my mama’s age. She wore a dark, freshly pressed business suit that seemed at war with the blond, scraggly ponytail, lopsided on the left side of her head. I noticed, too, how Sara’s eyelids were rimmed with color, like someone had taken a red crayon and drawn her suffering in around the eyes.
When she spoke, her voice was that of someone forcing their words to walk a narrow line, knowing one small slipup would send them wavering out of control. “We saw this in the new bulletin and we were thinking a hand-etched portrait of Daddy might be nice,” she said. She held out a copy of the ad I’d delivered to Mrs. Evans. It was clenched so tightly between her fingertips, it seemed as though she was trying to dissolve it there.
Luckily, Mimi was with me in the den this time. She guided Sara to the same padded chair Mr. Finley had collapsed in, and then pulled her own chair from behind the desk and sidled it up close to Sara’s.
Now, I already knew that Sam Fuller’s family hadn’t placed an order for his portrait yet — the one finished and waiting in Mr. Stein’s drawer — but seeing it all play out in front of me was unreal. Like watching a scary movie. One where you’re screaming at the pretty actress to watch out, but knowing the whole time there ain’t no way she can hear you. I could hardly scream at Sara and Mimi. But the feeling was the same: helplessness.
“Mr. Stein does lovely work. Perfect for our dear Sam.” Mimi’s face mirrored Sara’s heartache. I hadn’t even thought about Mimi being upset over the death of Sam, him being a friend of Grandpa’s and all. I took a step toward her. Mimi gave me a weak smile and continued, “What about a granite tile insert, honey? Abbot can engrave the portrait, and we can inset the stone in something like … A blue pearl monument would be nice.”
Feeling as low-down as I did, I could only manage to let out a tiny gasp of air. The portrait of Sam I’d seen was on a black tile, one I’d wager was swiped from the tile box behind the carriage house window. And now, Mimi was helping out Mr. Stein by selling the very portrait he’d already engraved — only neither Mimi nor Sara knew it. I just couldn’t stomach anymore.
If I’d been thinking more clearly, I would’ve grabbed them both by the hand and dragged them to the carriage house. I would’ve beat down the door and shown them Sam’s portrait already made, and then let Mr. Stein try and explain that one. But at the time, I didn’t fully appreciate how dangerous the portraits were. And who knows, the unexpected sight of her father’s face immortalized in stone might’ve been even harder on Sara. Either way, I didn’t. I just ran past Mimi and Sara Fuller. I ran through the kitchen and up the stairs with the loudest thunking-clunking footsteps I ever made.
“Bernie?” My father poked his head out of his and Mama’s room just as I reached the landing.
With my already mixed-up emotions, I nearly burst at the sight of him. Here Dad was, doing just what I’d wanted him to do all along. Apparently, with Mr. Stein around, he’d finally found some time to pay a little attention to Mama. But it wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right. Not with Sara Fuller and her messed-up hair and puffy eyes downstairs. I wanted my mama dragged back into the land of the living, but not at Sara’s, or anyone else’s, expense.
I hardly looked at Dad as I sprinted past him and into my bedroom. I pulled back my purple curtains and glared down on the carriage house, wishing it would simply explode into a fountain of flames with Mr. Stein in it. What was he up to out there? Working on another portrait? Would his etching mean another life stolen? Another kindly person, like Sara’s father or Mr. Finley’s wife? Was a life ending at that very moment with the tap-tap of his hammer and the chip-chipping of his chisel?
I was so caught up in my anger and frustration that I didn’t hear Mimi come in. “Is everything all right, Bernie?”
“It’s just … Mr. Stein … He …” I didn’t know how to say it all.
“Ah, yes. Abbot. He told me he may have startled you.”
“What?”
“I delivered his trays yesterday, remember? So you could go off gallivanting with Michael. Well, we sat and talked for a spell and I fear I may have misjudged him.”
“No,” I said. And then a second time, putting more heave into it, “No!”
“Now, Bernie, you should know better than anyone what misery can do to a person. When Thomas, well …” Mimi’s eyes shifted down the hall in the direction of Mama’s room. “I know Abbot can seem strange … frightening, even. But I think he’s just real torn up inside over Isabella’s death. The whole thing’s just heartbreaking if you ask me.”
I shook my head back and forth. “Wait. Who’s Isabella?” I said. I’d been about to come clean and blurt everything out to Mimi, but that was all suddenly derailed.
“Why, I was sure Abbot told you. He didn’t mention her when he gave you her portrait?”
I glanced at the sheet of granite resting on my nightstand, thought of the shimmering image I’d seen at the foot of my bed, and began piecing things together. “Isabella? I mean, no. I didn’t know her name.”
“I don’t know the whole story myself,” Mimi said stuffily, “and I sure wasn’t going to pry. But by the way he described her … and the work he put into that etching … Well, it seems to me he was madly in love with her.” Mimi’s eyes went soft and misty.
I didn’t put much stock in what Mimi was saying. She thought everyone should be in love. Just look at the tickled way she eyed me and Michael together.
“Oh, and don’t worry, Abbot said he’s already working on another portrait of Isabella.” She glanced at the one on my nightstand. “Although, I don’t think it’s quite right — you keeping the first after the spying you were doing. Abbot said he caught you peering in the window at him while he was working on it.” Mimi finished what she was saying and then made a show of bunching her lips together disapprovingly.
“Yes, but —”
Mimi put her hands up. “I know, I know, I’m somewhat to blame. By not wanting him in this house, I certainly gave the impression he couldn’t be trusted. But I never meant for you to spy. Troubled or not, I believe Abbot’s harmless. He may even be a right blessing on this family. So I’m telling you now, there will be no more peeking in his window. For heaven’s sake, Bernie!”
“But, Mimi —”
Mimi clicked her tongue loudly and the stern look on her face sharpened. I turned my gaze to the floor and nodded my head slowly. Once Mimi’s mind was made up, there was no changing it.
“Good. Then tell me, how was your day with Michael?” Mimi’s tone changed in an instant and her thin gray eyebrows rose above the top rim of her glasses.
I groaned inwardly. “Nice?” I said just to please her. I couldn’t very well tell her about the extra digging we’d done into Mr. Stein’s past, now could I? Or even about the time Michael and I had spent together in the cemetery. What would she think of that as a first date? Me babbling on about our family’s miserable past and then knocking him off the bench when he’d tried to kiss me … My face filled with heat thinking about it. However, my flushed skin just seemed to make Mimi’s eyes twinkle all the more. “I thought so.”
Mimi sighed and her lips pulled back down at the corners, “Well, I’d better get back to Sara. But you remember what I said about Abbot. You leave that poor man alone.”
“Mimi?” I said, trying to muster up some courage before she left. Maybe I could approach it a different way. “What do you know about signs … um … I mean the kind that predict something’s gonna happen … something bad?”
Mimi’s frown deepened. “What kind of bad, Bernie?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Signs of death coming
.” I’d given it more thought, and it was as close to an answer for what Mr. Stein’s portraits were as I could come up with.
“Now, Bernie. You know the only signs I believe in come from above. So unless God is speaking to you from a burning bush, I say you forget all about them.”
I nodded and smiled as best I could. There was no sense in discussing things further with Mimi, not with the stern look lingering on her face from the mere mention of the topic. I could only imagine what she’d think if I told her Mr. Stein was etching them. Especially after the cozy chat they’d apparently shared the day before.
All of a sudden, Mimi’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “Are you mixed up in something you shouldn’t be? One of them boards that tells you stuff, or those cards?”
“No. No!” I said, fighting once again to make Mimi believe me. However, as hard as I pleaded with my eyes to make it crack, Mimi’s face remained like stone. “It’s nothing. Really,” I said, and smiled brightly. “I was just curious what you thought.”
Mimi’s lips bunched together again, and she turned and walked out of my room without saying another word.
I exhaled heavily just as soon as she was gone. Trying to talk to my grandmother had obviously backfired, and how was I supposed to bring it all up to Dad? His mood was finally on an upswing and he was visiting Mama. I couldn’t possibly be responsible for crushing his spirits now.
I raised the phone and turned to the only person I could. “Hey, Michael,” I said when he picked up on the other end.
Michael answered cheerfully. “Bernie, is that you? You just can’t get enough of me, can you, Grim Reaper?”
“Shut that hole in your big head and listen to me. I know the woman’s name.”
I thought about sketching after I got off the phone, but my insides were knotted in a ball and I couldn’t seem to sit still. I decided it would be best to return downstairs. Was it too much to hope that Sara and Mimi would be looking through sandblasting designs, having forgotten all about hand-etched portraits? Most definitely.