by S. A. Hunt
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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This book is dedicated to my agent, Leon, the first one to give me a chance. It is also dedicated to my editor, Diana, who kept me in line both structurally and culturally. When there was one set of footprints in the sand, it was you who carried me.
Content Warning
intense scenes
animal abuse
police brutality
Then
Knock, knock, knock. The teenager stood in Marilyn Cutty’s driveway.
It’d been a few years since Robin last fled to Marilyn’s house to escape her feuding parents. Jason and Annie didn’t fight much anymore—their relationship had cooled from a forge-like heat to a cordial deference—so Robin hadn’t had much occasion to get away from their shouting, instead opting to sequester herself in the cupola. But today was a special case.
The screen door eased open, and Theresa LaQuices peered out. Her oval face was framed with wispy waves of black and gray.
“Yeah?” asked Theresa. “Can I help ye?”
“Hi,” said Robin. She’d never grown as close to the other two women as she had to Marilyn. Theresa and Karen spent a lot of time traveling—in fact, this was probably the first time she’d seen Theresa since early middle school. “Is Marilyn at home?”
“Maybe. Who’s askin’?”
“Uhh … Annie’s daughter.”
Theresa pushed the screen door open as far as it would allow her bulk through the frame, until the piston interrupted her with a tortured creak, and she stepped out onto the cement carport. The middlest sister of the Lazenbury three was an enormous brick of a woman, all shoulders and forearms, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. Billowing around her legs was a ruffled cotton sundress in bridal white.
“Annie’s kid?” Theresa squinted at her. “What you doin’ up here?”
As always, she was barefoot. Robin thought of that rhyme from Stephen King’s clown novel: He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. When Theresa walked, her blunt, stony-looking feet pressed themselves against the cement like dirty fists.
“Mom and I had an argument and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. I was gonna go to town, but I don’t have any money or a car.”
“So, you figured you’d toddle your little ass out here like you did when you was a kid, hmm?” Theresa nodded thoughtfully, staring at the evening sky. “Yeah, I remember. You’d wander out here and sit on the stoop, and you wouldn’t knock on the door or anything, you’d sit there and cry until one of us happened to hear it and come to see what was goin’ on.”
The two women stood there in the driveway for a moment, one young and indignant, one ancient and surly, as the sun gingerly eased itself onto the horizon behind them. Finally, the old woman said in her Cajunesque accent, “Your daddy always did mistreat you and Annie. I guess I can’t say I blame you for ending up out here the way you did. I could hear them hollerin’ at each other all the way up here.”
Robin nodded without looking up.
Heavy sigh. “Well, no sense in standin’ out here lettin’ the mosquitoes suck out your blood.” Theresa opened the door and waved the girl in. “Get on in here. Marilyn’s upstairs taking a nap, but I expect she’ll be down presently. It’s almost time for dinner and all.”
Being a lifelong gourmand, Theresa kept a clean workspace. The Lazenburg House’s kitchen was spotless, as always. “I made some banana bread this morning, if you want some,” she said, as they entered the house. One bearclaw finger directed Robin to a little yellow-brown loaf sitting on a cutting board on the island. “Help yourself. If you’ll excuse me, I’m goin’ to get back to my stories.” With that, she trundled back into the living room.
Hushed voices and subtle music came drifting back. Robin cut a piece of banana bread with a nearby bread knife, then sat eating it and staring out the huge bay window at the vineyard out back. This time of year, the grapes were still a couple months out from being harvested, so the vines drooped with clusters of tiny green and purple marbles, the lush trellis frosted with fire from the sunset above.
The bread was pretty good. She cut another piece and found a stick of butter in a covered dish, smeared that on it.
As she ate it, her mind slipped back into her bedroom, back into the lingering sensation of the other girl’s rough softballer hands on her hips, the floral smell of her hair. Second base in girls’ softball, four inches taller and an Amazon of a sophomore. Under her hands, Brianna’s soft skin was cold and hot in turns: gooseflesh from the cool spring air and warm under the hoodie.
“Hi, littlebird.”
Snatched out of her reverie, Robin suppressed a jump and looked over her shoulder. Marilyn Cutty stood at the kitchen door that led beyond the fridge into the rear hallway with its wet-looking tomato-soup paint job.
“Hi, Grandma.”
The old woman sauntered behind the island and pushed up the wizard sleeves of her gigantic sweater. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Cutty asked, washing her hands. She was as tall as ever, a heron in cable-knit wool, and so towered over the counter it seemed as if the kitchen were made for a shorter species. She looked like an ancient sorceress or a high priestess of some long-dead tribe, regal and well composed. “Been a long time since you found your way over here. Could I assume your parents have taken up that time-honored pastime of yelling at each other once again?”
“No,” said Robin, hunched over, clutching her piece of banana bread like a squirrel with an acorn. “No, they hung up their gloves. Looks like I picked up where my dad left off.”
“Ahh, now you and Annabelle are getting into it.”
“Yep.”
“What about, if I may be so bold?”
Insides wound as tight as a bowstring, Robin searched for tactful words. “She keeps me all chained up in her house and in her—in her philosophy?” No, that wasn’t quite right. “I don’t know what to call it—she’s really religious, you know? More and more ever since I was little. And she’s always trying to push those ideas onto me and, I dunno, ‘keep me on the straight and narrow,’ or something. She used to drag me to church, but back then she was all right. Just a Sunday thing. We don’t go anymore, but—”
“Feels kind of like you live with a nun?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“Feels like you don’t go to church anymore because she brought church home?”
“Yeah.” A tiny thrill of adrenaline arced up Robin’s insides at how spot-on Cutty had gotten it. Never thought of it that way before, but hearing it out loud was like being slapped. “Yeah. I mean, she didn’t really launch into it today, but sometimes she’ll see me looking all messed up ’cause I had
a bad day, and then she’ll come into my room with ‘words of wisdom,’ and quote scripture and shit. Proverbs this, Matthew that. And sometimes we’ll be sittin’ and eatin’ dinner at the kitchen table, and she’ll get on a kick of talking about Jesus, and about how Jesus loves me, and how it’s okay if I think this or that, because Jesus loves me anyway, and we’re all sinners. Today, Mom caught me making out with Brianna Wilson in my cupola bedroom. Came creeping up the stairwell and saw us. Now she’s giving me shit about being a lesbian. And I’m not even a lesbian.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I mean, no. No—but I don’t appreciate the assumption. I like dudes, too.”
Did you forget how to knock?
You must not have heard me, her mother had said. I guess you were busy.
“She’s always sneaking up on me like some kind of ninja, trying to catch me doing … something. What, I don’t know.”
“Living your life?” asked Cutty.
Why are you always interrupting my life? I finally manage to make friends, even though you hardly ever let me go anywhere other than school, and you’re still hovering over me with your Flowers in the Attic crap.
“It’s not like I ever do anything that would justify her paranoia—”
I’m not imprisoning you up here. You’re free to leave whenever you want.
“—I don’t do drugs. I’m not out there slutting it up, you know? What is she going to catch me doing? I mean, besides making out with my girlfriend.” In a smaller voice: “I guess.”
Is that right? Robin had retorted. So, you’re not going to stop me if I walk out of this house and go wherever?
Mom: Where is ‘wherever’?
That’s the problem! You don’t need to know!
‘Wherever’ turned out to be Grandma’s house. Cutty busied herself over the stove, filling a kettle with water and putting it on to boil. While she waited, she shoveled a couple scoopfuls of sugar into a pitcher. As she did, she chuckled to herself.
“Hmm?” Robin made an inquisitive noise. “What’s funny?”
“You’d never believe the kind of person your mother used to be.” Cutty turned and folded her arms, leaning against the counter. “She wasn’t always a Southern Baptist. She was a pagan, like us. And may I say, one hell of a hippie. So, it’s funny to hear about how she’s buttoned up her past and you along with it. She has no room to talk.”
“What do you mean? Was she a flower child?”
“Well, she was born in the last couple years of the seventies, so she didn’t get to … partake of the ‘cultural revolution,’” said Cutty, air-quoting with her fingers. “All her development took place in the eighties. The Me Decade. She was into Madonna, and Loreena McKennitt, and Nirvana, and she burned so much dope, the fire chief could have put out a warrant on her.”
Robin blinked. “Really?”
“Oh, yes. Wild child.” Cutty shrugged. “Perhaps she felt a certain measure of guilt at her freewheeling ways when you were born. Renounced them to become a better mother to you. Maybe in the intervening years she’s burrowed a little too deep, spent a little too much time in that house, in her own head, and all that scripture’s rotting her brain.” Robin made a face and Cutty half-turned to stare out the window. “It happens. People seek shelter in religion. For some, it slowly transforms from a shelter into a cage. If you hold on to something too tightly for too long without giving any of it away—religion, love, hatred, knowledge, many things—it turns bitter and thorny and useless inside of you. Anything can torture you, if you let it.”
They sat quietly as the kettle huffed and chuckled on the stove.
Uhhm, Mom had asked, so does this mean you’re gay?
What? No. What would it matter if I was? God doesn’t give a shit.
Don’t matter to me. Just wanted to ask. And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, please.
If it don’t matter, why ask?
Her mother had ignored the question. You go out there and I can’t protect you!
Protect me from what? Does it have something to do with the hoodoo carved into the windowsills? Yeah, I noticed it, even though you painted over it. You know you’re crazy, right? It’s been there for years and years. What even is that? Some kind of Catholic exorcism shit? It looks like chicken scratch. Robin’s hands had naturally, easily, scrunched up into fists, and she’d fully faced her mother down for the first time in her life. You know everybody in town thinks you’re fucked up, right? They call you Hocus Pocus, call you the Blair Witch. Last week, I was walking out of fifth period. Some cheerleader bitch out in the hallway said, ‘I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.’ Last year, somebody scratched a pentagram into my locker door and pushed a dead mouse through the front vent.
At the time, the hurt and surprise on her mother’s face had bounced right off of Robin’s angry mind, but as she thought back on it an hour later, guilt lay on her like a hot, heavy quilt. God, if only they knew how wrong they were, she had continued, laying in to her mother. You’re about as far from a witch as a woman can get, with your Bible crap, and saying grace over lunch at Taco fucking Bell. You look like you should be out back milking goats, not sacrificing them. You’re sick in the head. I can’t stand being around you.
A cannonball of shame rested in her guts.
“Marilyn?” Robin asked, here, now.
“Yes, dear?”
“I been wanting to ask you a question for a really long time. It’s kind of a weird one. I’m sorry if it’s super awkward.”
“Absolutely fine. Fire away. I am nothing if not weird.”
“Are…” The girl looked down at her hands; they’d found their way to the drawstring of her hoodie and were meticulously braiding the ends together. “Are you my real grandma?”
A genuine smile spread across the old woman’s face. “No, littlebird, I am not. I’m afraid I can’t claim that particular distinction.”
“Mom says my grandmother disappeared after her parents split up, when she was a kid. She didn’t want custody, and she moved away, but Mom doesn’t know where she moved away to.”
“Yes, that’s right. Your mother was raised by your grandfather John in Virginia. John Reynolds, I think his name was. Reynolds was your mother Annie’s maiden name.”
“I always wondered if you were my real grandmother.” Robin finished off the banana bread and contemplated another piece. “I wondered if there was some awful family secret keeping my mom from telling me about you.”
“No, dear.” Sly amusement spread across Cutty’s face. “I’m a foolish, sentimental old woman. I love to help people. I have the compulsion to save everybody, whether I have the means or not. When your family moved out here, I saw your mother out there mowing the lawn by herself.” She busied herself tidying the kitchen. “While I am normally an advocate for women doing whatever the hell they please, up to and including their own yard work, I found it inconceivable she should have to do all the housework and paint the house—that house was a real fixer-upper when you all moved in—and do the yard work. Well, my friends and I went down there to introduce ourselves, and we ended up helping her do that huge lawn and paint the house while your father was at work.”
The kettle whistled. “And so we’ve been friends ever since. A little surrogate family, I suppose, and Karen and Theresa your mother’s de facto aunts. I guess that makes me her surrogate mother.” Marilyn sighed and poured the hot water into the pitcher of sugar and added two teabags. There was a brief pause where she seemed as if she were about to say something else, but then she fished in a drawer for a wooden spoon and stirred the pitcher with it. “So, when your mother had you, I suppose I naturally slipped into the role of surrogate grandmother as well.”
“You’re good at it,” murmured Robin.
“Thank you, littlebird,” said Cutty. “I appreciate that. Never got the chance to be a real grandmother in my own right, so it was nice I could do that for you. I hope you derived some measu
re of comfort and guidance under my watch.”
Robin shrugged, overcome with a sudden awkward shyness. “I guess so.”
“I could, though.” The old woman rinsed the spoon and put it in the dish drain, coming around the island to sit next to the girl. “Be your grandmother. If you wanted. You’re still welcome here. You could stay here. At least, for a while. Until you graduate high school.”
“I don’t know … I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“It would be no imposition at all. Love to have you around. And I’m sure that now you’re a young lady with a little maturity, no longer a squalling babe, the other two would come around to the idea. We could teach you so many things, littlebird, about the woods out there, and about wine, and gardening, and about love, and the world. I would very much like to have a fresh new face around here—you know, I love my sisters, but sometimes I see so much of them, I want to wring their necks. We can even learn from each other. You can teach me about the internet and help me set up one of those Facebook things. Got some friends out in Arizona and Maine I should be keeping up with.”
“Sounds nice, actually,” said Robin. “But I don’t know.” She couldn’t quite put her finger on why that sounded both so enticing and also so … weird, for lack of a better word. Maybe it was because she had become so unfamiliar with them in the intervening years, especially Theresa and Karen. Or maybe it was the idea of suddenly sharing a living space with people who were so much older, their age making their routines and the house’s atmosphere so fundamentally foreign to her. Living with a house full of spinsters from another time just seemed to rub her the wrong way.
“We could learn so much from each other,” said Cutty, bumping shoulders with the girl. “I know things that would blow your mind, kiddo. Secrets.”
“Secrets?”
“Like the book cover says, Things They Don’t Want You to Know. Know what I mean? Things a lady of your age and demeanor would be served well to know. Things your mother knows, and stuff she has … chosen not to accept in her new life as a God-fearing woman. High time you step out of your childhood and consider your options as a young woman. We can help you in ways your mother no longer has the tools or wherewithal for.”