Lovely Wild

by Megan Hart

  The only noise on the video now was the click of wood on wood. The small girl in the video had been set to the task of putting wooden shapes—circle, square, rectangle—into appropriately matched holes in a board. Painted in bright, primary colors, the puzzle was probably fit for a child of eighteen months. This girl was the size of a five-year-old, but Ryan knew her real age was eight years, four months. Though eventually she’d developed normally, extreme malnutrition and deprivation had caused her to suffer from Kaspar Hauser syndrome, or psychosocial dwarfism.

  The little girl in the video was his wife as a child.

  He’d set up his laptop so he could tap away at notes as he watched, but he also held a notepad and his favorite Montblanc pen on his lap so he could scribble down his thoughts. Both the computer and the paper were ignored. He’d been through three of these videotapes so far and had only been able to watch, stunned, without taking any notes at all.

  By the time Ryan’s father had adopted Mariposa Pfautz and brought her home, Ryan had already been out of the house for several years. Off to med school. Deciding if he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps or maybe do something different. Internal medicine, maybe. Or even pediatrics.

  Ryan had known, of course, about his dad’s work. In those pre-internet days, Dr. Leon Calder’s success with the “Pine Grove Pixie” had been written up in medical journals and used in textbooks. His dad had taken these countless hours of notes and filmed all of this video. He’d spent a great portion of his life studying the girl he’d later adopted as his own daughter. It had destroyed his marriage and hadn’t been too good for his relationship with his son, either.

  And all along, Ryan had thought he’d known everything about what had happened simply because he’d overheard bits and pieces or had read a few of his dad’s articles.

  Watching her in these ancient videotapes, there was no mistaking who she was. Ryan saw echoes of Kendra and Ethan in that little girl. The tilt of her head was purely Mari, but the sound of her giggle when she fit a piece into the right place was so much like his daughter’s as a small child that Ryan’s heart twisted. The young Mari’s furrowed brow of concentration was the same as Ethan’s when he was working on a Lego model.

  Ryan, as it turned out, had known nothing.

  On the video, young Mari managed to get the pieces into the puzzle after a few false tries. She looked beyond the camera to whoever was watching—was it his dad? She rubbed her stomach, then touched her mouth. Then again. A third time, looking stubborn and angry.

  “Are you hungry, Mariposa?”

  That set of motions again.

  Ryan paused the video and reached for one of the files with the earliest dates. He flipped through the pages, some browned with age at the edges. “Patient appears to understand language, though vocabulary is extremely limited. With no physical reason for her inability to speak, it’s nevertheless clear the patient has adapted a series of signs to indicate simple communication. Hunger, cold, fear and, most surprisingly, compassionate responses are all indicated by hand motions occasionally accompanied by grunts, growls and even barks. It’s unlikely, based on initial observations, that the patient will ever be able to communicate normally.”

  Ryan rubbed at his face, letting his hand cover his eyes for a minute or so. Elsewhere in the house, he heard the faint sound of raised voices as his wife called to their children. No hand motions and grunts there. She had learned to speak.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ.”

  How had he not understood this? How had he thought that his wife’s story was in any way similar to those he’d read in med school or during his psychiatric residency? How could he have thought she’d survived something as simple as poverty, abuse and neglect?

  He unpaused the video.

  “Mariposa? Are you hungry?”

  Young Mari made the same motions, a moue of frustration on her small mouth. She added what sounded suspiciously like a growl. Through the TV’s small and inadequate speakers came the sound of rustling paper and the murmur of voices. Mari pounded her hand on the table, making the puzzle pieces jump.

  Ryan’s dad came into the frame. God, he looked so young Ryan had to pause the video again. His dad had died too soon, no question. When this video had been made, he’d been just about the same age as Ryan was now. It was creepy, not just watching the juxtaposition of his children over his wife’s childish face, but seeing a reflection of himself in the image of his dad.

  His finger pressed the remote again. His dad moved toward Mari, who erupted into a whirlwind of screams and grunts. She pushed away, dumping her chair and scattering the puzzle pieces. She dove beneath the table.

  His dad looked at the camera and whoever was in the room with him. He made a “hold on” gesture with his hand, then squatted beside the table. The camera moved, though whoever had set up the tripod hadn’t meant for the angle to accommodate a view of under the table. His dad was still in focus, but only a small piece of Mari’s dress stuck out.

  “Mariposa, it’s all right. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s me, Dr. Calder. Remember? I gave you the soft dolly you like to take to bed with you at night. And I have something for you today, too.” He pulled something from the pocket of his sweater. “Look what I have for Mari.”

  A small hand reached from under the table, but Ryan’s dad inched it back. “Ah, ah. If you want it, you have to come out from under the table.”

  And so it went, like teasing a scared dog from its den. Ryan watched his dad tempt out the small girl from her hiding place with the promise of a treat. His dad looked at the camera, triumphant, when Mari stood in front of him, tearing open the plastic on a chocolate snack cake. She flinched and muttered when he put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t immediately run away. It must have been some kind of triumph, Ryan thought, watching his father. He couldn’t even imagine.

  “Ryan?”

  Quickly, he clicked off the TV and swiveled in his desk chair toward the doorway. He’d have to make sure to keep the door locked. Now that he knew the contents of those tapes, he couldn’t risk Mari or the kids stumbling in on him while he was watching. It would be worse than catching him watching porn.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “I’m taking the kids to the library. Want to come?”

  “I’m working.”

  His wife looked over the room, then settled her gaze on him. “You could take a break.”

  Even if he could, why would he want to? He wasn’t here for a vacation. He was here to work.

  But he didn’t let any annoyance filter into his voice. “I wish I could. But you guys go. Have a good time.”

  “Okay.” Mari in the doorway was nothing like the little girl in the video. She spoke in words, not gestures. Mari now, not Mari then. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Have fun.”

  She nodded and turned, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “How’s the work going?”

  “Great.” The enthusiasm burst out of him, unfeigned. A wide and somehow hot grin spread his mouth wide. “Really great.”

  Mari blinked. He watched her, noting the tilt of her head. The way she stood still, then moved. Damn it, the work...this was work, here. This was history unfolding in front of him.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good. See you later.”

  Sweat burst into his armpits, along his lip, in the small of his back. Heat that had nothing to do with the sun shining through the glass or the fan lazily circulating sun-warmed air in this small room weighted him like a quilt. Ryan grinned hard at his wife’s back as she left him, then turned again to face the TV. He looked at the computer, at his empty notepad.

  There was so much more to this than he’d even thought. A book about his father’s work had seemed like a natural place to start. Focusing on his dad’s most famously successful case of young Mariposa Pfautz, a no-brainer. Bringing them back here had seemed financially wise, not to mention that, yes, of course he’d hoped that by returning her to the
place where she’d grown up, his wife could shed some necessary light onto what had happened to her. Flesh out his book with current reactions, fill in the blanks of what it had been like.

  But this...seeing what he’d seen, putting it together with what he knew of her now...

  Forget his career, forget going back to the drudgery of dealing with bored, rich anorexics with Electra complexes and dull, neurotic accountants suffering from midlife crises. This book, this story was going to make him rich. Better than that. It was going to make him famous.

  Ryan started typing.

  NINETEEN

  MARI DANCED. SHE wore a pink dress and a paper crown. She was small, her feet bare. Her hair felt heavy down her back. She spun and spun in green, green grass, arms out, head tipped back to catch sight of the sky above.

  She didn’t want to go inside the house. Gran was hollering and kicking out at the dogs, who barked and bit and howled. She was throwing things, breaking them. She would grab Mari. Maybe kick her, too.

  Mari liked to be outside in the grass. In the trees and the stream, where she dipped her fingers to drink and looked for crayfish. She climbed the mountain to find the clearing at the top where the sun beat down on her head and made the sparkles in her dress glitter and shine.

  “I am here! I’m here!”

  She looked at her dress and all her happy flew away. There were no sparkles. No pink. Her dress was ugly brown, ragged. It wasn’t even a dress. Just an old T-shirt with a rope tie around the waist to keep it from dragging on the ground. No crown. Her hair, tangled, dirty, a mess.

  She was alone but didn’t want to be. She was waiting for someone to come. Not a Them with loud voices, the ones Gran shouted at and threatened with her knife. The ones who sometimes came and always left.

  Her hands made pictures in the air.

  She was waiting for her prince to come, the one who told her all about princesses in sparkly dresses and who would save her from all of this. The one who loved her, kept her safe, made sure she had food and clothes.

  She’s not small now. Her feet not bare. Her dress has become a pair of plaid pajama bottoms she recognizes as her husband’s.

  That’s how she knows she’s dreaming, when she understands what she’s wearing.

  Of course, she thinks as her fingers twist and turn, telling stories. The forest prince. Of course that’s who she’s waiting for. And in the dream, Mari opens her mouth to say his name but says it aloud for real, instead.

  She wakes with a gasp that stirs Ryan beside her but doesn’t wake him. She puts her fingers over her lips, remembering the feeling of sunshine on her face. Just a dream. She’s had plenty. She dreams of this house more often than she thinks about it when awake.

  She’d been terrified when they took her away. Gran and the forest prince had always warned her what would happen if she didn’t hide. If she didn’t stay quiet and silent. They would come and steal her, and that was just what had happened.

  Mari had been a secret. Something to be ashamed of. When she was small this had seemed to make sense; it was all she’d known, at any rate. Only later, when she had her own children, did she no longer understand how her mother could not have cherished her.

  She can lie back down and sleep beside her husband, the man who brought her back here after all these years of normal life. She can even roll toward him and make love to him—he’ll complain if she wakes him just to hold her, but if she slides up naked next to him and rouses his dick, he’ll be more than happy to comply.

  Instead, she swings her feet over the edge of the bed, feeling for the floor that is still too many inches away to feel familiar. Her toes tap hardwood and the nubbled edges of a braided rag rug. She gets out of bed. Now that the children are older, they’ve become somehow traumatized by the sight of her sleeping nude even though she’s done it their entire lives, but she doesn’t reach for the robe she always keeps handy.

  Naked, Mari pads across the wood floor of this unfamiliar room. Down the unfamiliar hall. The stairs. Only when she’s in the kitchen at last does she stop to take her hand from the wall to guide her. Only then she closes her eyes and breathes in deep.

  This place she knows.

  The table is different, and the appliances, but nothing about the layout has changed. She can find her way blindfolded, or in the pitch dark, or with her eyes closed. Mari glides across the slick tile floor that had once been buckled linoleum, toward the porch Ryan’s taken over as his office.

  She gives only a cursory glance at the piles of folders, the file boxes. The computer. This is her husband’s lair. The reason he brought them here and uprooted them.

  “I love my husband, and he loves me,” Mari says on a whisper that nevertheless sounds very loud.

  There is nothing between her and the night except glass and wood, but that barrier is still too much. She twists the lock on the door to the yard. It opens easily enough with the quietest of snicks. She pushes it open. She goes into the grass.

  She breathes.

  Oh, how she breathes.

  Mari holds out her arms at her sides and lets her head fall back, eyes to the sky. She can see stars, and it’s not at all like it is at home, where there’s so much light pollution they’re lucky if they can make out any of the constellations. And forget about wandering outside at night without clothes, or even in just a nightgown. All the neighbors would know.

  A breeze ruffles the grass. The trees murmur with it. She looks toward the woods. Unlike the upstairs floors of the house behind her, she does know the forest. She ran there and searched for food and gathered wood. She played her lonely games there, making up a prince to save her. A family to love her when her own so clearly did not.

  She drinks in the night air better than any wine or drug. Free, she turns in a slow circle, the night-wet grass cold on her shins. In her dreams, she is still wild.

  In this place, she feels like she could be wild again.

  Her gut twists with knowing this, not because it’s been some vast secret she could never admit, but because of knowing that no matter how she might want to, she never can. Some poet had once said you can’t go home again, and Mari knows that’s not true. Because here she is, home again, back in the place that made her.

  But what is true is that even if you go home, nothing is the same.

  Time has passed and changed her, and no matter what she might have been had she stayed here, she is not that person now. She has a family of her own. A husband. Children she adores and is proud to acknowledge.

  She is not the silent, feral girl who fought with dogs for scraps and slept with them for warmth in the snowtime...in the winter, Mari reminds herself. Using the words she learned so painstakingly. She is not that girl. Not anymore.

  She’s turning to go back in the house when something fluttering in the tree line catches her eye. She crosses the yard and plucks the dancing bit of paper and ribbon from the tree limb that has snared it. She studies it, her eyes wide to take in the darkness. She traces the edges of it with a finger.

  It’s a butterfly.

  A folded paper butterfly, hung up with ribbon. It’s been here for a long time, if the way it shreds so easily under her touch is any indication. The paper disintegrates and becomes confetti. The ribbon remains, its edges frayed. Mari smoothes it between her fingers. She can’t tell the color.

  She looks into the trees, where it’s too dark to see. She listens. She breathes again, but smells nothing except night air, wet grass, the warmth of her own body and scent of her soap.

  Then she turns and leaves the woods behind.

  TWENTY

  KENDRA HADN’T HEARD from Sammy or Logan in a whole week. Yeah, her phone got a crappy signal, but she’d had texts and messages manage to get through from some of her other friends, so it wasn’t as if she wasn’t getting anything. Just nothing from the two people who were supposed to be her best friends.

  “Eff them,” she said aloud to the trees and summer sun that was going to burn her face beca
use she’d been dumb and forgotten sunscreen.

  She flipped a double bird to the sky. It didn’t make her feel better. She scuffed her toes along some gravel. At least this time she’d worn sneakers.

  It was hard to be angry when she felt a little sick from the sun. And honestly, she wasn’t mad, just disappointed and sad and embarrassed that Logan knew how much she liked him and was still getting with Sammy and ignoring her. That thought burned her more than the sun ever could.

  She checked her phone once more, but found nothing. Wishing she’d thought to bring some water, Kendra went back into the coolness of the trees, picking her way down the steep slope. She realized she was a little lost only when some pebbles skidded out from under her feet and she fell on her ass, then looked to see that the path she’d been on was no longer there.

  “Shit.” Her phone had maps on it, along with location services, but that didn’t do her any good when she couldn’t get service. She pulled it out, anyway, thumbing the screen to see if she could put in the address of the house. Nothing came up, and Kendra scrubbed at her face. “Shit, shit.”

  Calm down, she thought. You’re not lost. You’re just not sure where you are.

  By the time she reached the edge of the woods and the field, she had a better sense of her bearings. Instead of coming out behind her house, though, Kendra found herself faced with a stereotypical white picket fence surrounding a pristinely kept yard belonging to a house that was in somewhat less repair. She stopped, not certain about going beyond the fencing, though she recognized the house. This was the place at the other end of the lane, the one that shared the long, winding stone driveway leading to the rural road beyond. Rosie’s house.

  Kendra checked her phone, but the service had disappeared again. With a sigh, she started easing her way around the fence, heading for the driveway. The house’s front door opened as she reached the gravel.