“I’m going to see my woman. She still lives there.”
“Get outta here! Both of us going to our women.” Bear turns to look at Jonah. He grins, but this time his expression is easy.
Jonah catches Bear’s grin and wears it. His mood seems to lighten. “Yup.” The grin takes over his face, and Bear watches, curious. “Believe it or not,” Jonah says, “I’ve known her my whole life. We grew up across the street from each other. Now, hers was the moneyed side, so you’re right about that.” Bear gives the kind of shrug that says, Of course I’m right. “Her dad was so rich,” Jonah seems to drift to another world, “he gave her the family home as a wedding present. Bought himself a new estate.”
“No shit.”
“I used to watch her from my bedroom when I was a kid. She was something else.”
“I hear you.” Bear jerks his fist aggressively up and down. “We’re all watching somebody.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Jonah gets instantly serious, and Bear grins at him.
“I’m guessing it didn’t last,” Bear says. “She got the family estate and you, you got run outta town. That explains the shitty van and Canadian plates.”
Jonah stares at the road.
“You trying to get her back?” Bear nods knowingly. “Or is she the one who’s got it coming?”
“No.” I can barely hear Jonah. “Everything I’ve ever done is for her.”
“I heard that one before.”
“When I was a boy, she was the only person to see … She called me a natural scientist.”
“You’re a scientist? How much a scientist make these days? One, one-fifty?”
“I’m still developing my hypothesis. No money in that.” Bear cocks an eyebrow like he doesn’t believe him. “The critical attachment theory,” Jonah says to impress him. “Remember those words. One day I’ll be famous for it. She’ll come around then.”
“Yeah, chicks dig famous men. Hot for money and power.”
“Darwin said success for a man of science comes down to this: the patience to reflect, dedication to fact, common sense, and innovation. It’s the same for experimental evolution. Even science has to evolve.”
“I heard that whole evolution shtick is bullshit.”
Jonah flinches. “It is not.”
“That’s what I read.” Bear bends over and seems to rifle through something at his feet.
Jonah says, “Our daughter ran away.”
“Huh,” Bear says. Something rustles in his hands.
“I have to find her. Bring her home.”
“Fucking kids.”
“Maybe you could help me keep an eye out. She’s sixteen, fair, about five foot two — ”
Bear sits up. “DeNitia Jewelers?”
“Hey — ” Jonah snaps his head to look.
Bear is holding a small, shiny bag with soft ribbon loops and silver tissue sticking out. I can see it because he raises it to read the silver writing on the side. Beachport’s most exquisite for over fifty years.
“Put that down.” Jonah’s profile tenses with indecision — is he going to be angry or placating?
Bear reaches into the bag, past the tissue, and pulls out a small red velvet case.
“That’s not yours to look at.” The van swerves as Jonah eyes Bear.
Bear opens the lid. A gold ring sticks out of a thin slot, its band dotted with tiny sparkling bits. “Gotta say, man, not overly impressive.”
The side of Jonah’s face twitches. “Leave that.”
Bear pulls out a receipt and examines it. “This is almost twenty years old. How old were you when you wanted to tie the knot? Were you even legal?”
“I was twenty. She was twenty-four. It was perfectly decent. Please don’t touch that.”
“So, wait, you knocked her up, bought her a ring and never gave it to her, and her old man still gave you the family home as a wedding present?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but there were extenuating circumstances.”
“Extenuating circumstances.” Bear mocks his words. “So this ring has been sitting in your van for eighteen years?”
“No. It’s going to someone else now, so please put it down.”
Someone else. I think of Marlie and shudder. I picture her delicate face the last time I saw her. The way she said, “Love is something I make up to feel better.”
“You giving this to someone else? I mean, why not? Why let a cheap, piece of shit ring go to waste?”
“That’s enough.” Jonah’s hands grip the wheel. Bear is too big a man to care about Jonah’s beating fists, but he drops the bag. I hear it land with a soft thud.
There’s a brief teetering quiet, then Bear barks out, “The twins!”
I freeze, and Jonah does too. “What?” he says, his voice instantly smaller.
Bear jabs his finger at Jonah. “That’s why I heard of Beachport. It’s where they took those twins from.” Jonah shakes his head, but Bear looks triumphant. “Yeah, it was almost sixteen years ago. I remember because it was the fall I was looking for my first job. Tried up and down the coast. It was all anyone was talking about.”
Jonah says, calm and condescending, “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, yeah, it was all over the news. Some nut-job stole them right outta their home. Middle of the night. You come from there — you don’t remember?”
I can feel Jonah letting off the gas. “I’ve been gone a long time. News didn’t make it to Canada, I guess.”
“They never found the dude who did it. Gotta be a cold case.”
Jonah steers the van to the side of the road. We’re still in the woods, far from anything. “Okay,” he says as he eases to a stop. “This is as far as I can take you.”
Bear looks startled for the first time. “That wasn’t the deal, man. You gotta take me as far as you’re going.”
“I’m stopping here.” He talks to Bear like he’s a very young, very stupid child. “I’ve been driving five straight hours. I want to eat my dinner in peace and get some sleep. Beachport can wait till the morning.”
“Fair enough,” Bear says. “I’ll hang with you. Could use some shut-eye myself.”
“Good. I appreciate the company. Let’s pitch camp here.” Jonah opens his door, and so does Bear. Bear climbs out and slams the door and stands on the graveled edge. The thick pines are a fitting backdrop for his hulking, animal shape.
Jonah slams his door too, but he’s still inside the van. A tremendous force yanks me back as Jonah accelerates and takes off down the road. I have only a moment to register Bear’s astounded face before he’s gone from my sight.
We travel for another hour or two. Then the van slows and I can feel something different about the way Jonah drives. As if the car is going in circles. I take a chance and peer out.
We’re in the middle of a town. I recognize it immediately from the newscast on the video. I remember the announcer’s monotonous voice: “The small, close-knit community of Beachport is on high alert.” The road sign: Beachport, Maine, Where the sea takes your breath away.
There are many impressive buildings, obviously built a long time ago: a city hall, a library, a post office, a bank. There’s a large park with benches here and there and a fountain. Smiling mothers push babies in strollers and small kids skip along beside them. The trees have leafed out, some blooming with white or pink flowers.
Jonah looks around too, like he’s maybe remembering how he used to skip in that park with his mother or how he explored that library to find another science textbook.
After we circle the town a bit, Jonah drives toward the sea. He stops on top of a hill and parks the van. A huge harbor spreads out below, and I recognize it too. The colorful mishmash of steel and masts. Hulls of every shape and size. Ocean breezes playing with flags and sails. People wandering the docks. I wonder if this is where Jonah’s father used to work on the tugs, the good, salt-of-the-earth kind of fellow.
Nerves swell up inside me. I don’t know
yet how I’ll get away from Jonah and to my family. Will he drive to the house and then I’ll sneak out of the van? Or will I learn where they live, then sneak out later and find my way back to them? Another answer I want to know is if my parents can help me help the ones I left behind.
Marlie. A violent storm of guilt overtakes me. Would Marlie stay with him? Would she accept his ring and invent their love to make herself feel better? She doesn’t know anything about experiments, about stolen babies.
The sun starts to set behind us, dipping into the horizon, and the sky flushes pink then mauve. Jonah starts up the van and pulls away from the curb.
He circles back until we get to a beautiful neighborhood, full of grand houses and extravagant gardens. Slowly, he navigates turns and angles his head this way and that. Probably looking for me.
He drives to a winding street that curves like a wave up and down a hill. Along one side, the houses are huge and sit on wide lawns that are guarded behind stone or brick or iron gates.
My body starts to shiver. I see it, the house from the video. Kevin and Shannon Birkshire’s home. A large house with an iron gate and a long driveway. Painted shutters around every window. No lights on inside. No car in the driveway.
Jonah pulls the van over and turns his head to look at the other side of the street, the side where the houses are simple and small. We grew up across the street from each other, he said to Bear. He checks out a brick and shingle house with broken steps leading to a forsaken porch. I used to watch her from my bedroom when I was a kid.
Jonah cranes his head about, casting for me in the shadows. When he doesn’t see me, he settles in to watch the house on the other side of the street. The Birkshires’ house. My house.
I can’t leave the van until I see them, until they can gather me up and protect me.
I hold my breath and count seconds and shove my hands in my pockets and clench and unclench my fingers.
A dangerous excitement builds inside me. One that risks making me do something that will ruin everything.
When the daylight in the van dulls like smoke and is extinguished, Jonah starts up in his seat, then hunkers down again and watches through the spokes of the steering wheel. I lift my head high against the lid of the box so I can see what he sees.
There’s a blur of movement at the house across the street. The front gates at the end of the driveway swing open. A long, beige car is waiting to go in. There’s a woman in the driver’s seat and she skims in and out of view, flashed by lights in the yard, as she pulls in and parks the car.
She gets out and closes the door, then leans her back against it and blows out her breath. She seems to whisper something to herself. Her forehead furrows. I am already memorizing every bit of her.
Her face is almost unrecognizable, but it’s definitely the woman from the videotape. Shannon Birkshire. She looks old now, soft skin drooping her face into mournfulness.
The passenger door opens and a man gets out. Dr. Kevin Birkshire. He looks older too. He opens the back door of the car, reaches in, and straightens up again. After a minute or so, a little boy, about five or six, jumps out. He’s bawling so loudly I can hear him. His shoulders jerk in a hiccup, and this seems to make him angrier.
My mother says something to the little boy, but I can’t hear it. She walks to the house. Screaming, the boy follows her. Behind them, my father locks the car and follows too.
The front door of the house is open now and an overhead light glows from the hallway. Every little inch inside looks warm and comforting.
My mother says a few more things as my father and the screaming boy go past her into the house. As she steps into the hall, the light shines on her like a spotlight announcing her arrival. The boy blocks her way into the rest of the house by stomping his feet and crying, and my mother looks down at him, then reaches to lift him into her arms. As she turns, I notice a weariness in her face, a pained surrender I’ve never seen on another person.
The little boy is so angry that at first he punches his fists at her and flails away. But my mother’s head nuzzles in, her cheek caresses his, and just like that, he calms. His whole body settles against her, his head burrows into her shoulder, his hands that were fists relax and circle her, the little fingers flicker up and down her arms.
Something melts inside me too, turning me into a small child. One small enough to be bundled in her arms, to be rocked and shushed and caressed. Moments I never had, but might have had, appear out of empty air: me as a child in this house, running through the grass, laughing, being caught by this mother, me happy and she free of painful weariness, me walking home from school with this mother and telling her the stories of my day, this mother stroking the back of my head. This mother will scoop me up. She will let me erase my anger and fear, let me rub it out on the skin of her neck.
I prepare myself to burst out of the box, to push through the back doors of the van, to run to her, calling and laughing. To scream at her, “I’m here, I’m here!”
I imagine her eyes widening with surprise, then with delight. Her dropping the boy and coming at me with arms flung open. Her laughing too, and crying with happiness. Both of us forgetting the years we missed together as if life were only starting now.
My muscles coil and twitch, begging me to run to her. My heart pounds at my chest — a prisoner caught inside a cell and trying to smash its way to freedom.
But I don’t move. Not a muscle, not a hair.
Something stronger has wrapped its dark arms around me. It clamps me down and holds me in my place.
In the hallway of the house, my mother, still holding the boy, steps out of the light and her silhouette moves to shut the door. I picture her hand touching the inner doorknob. The doorknob knowing her touch. Even the doorknob more important. She pushes it away, and the door shuts between us.
In front of me, Jonah sits up and looks intently at the yard. Waiting for me to run out, maybe from the garden, maybe from the street.
But I don’t run out. I’m being held inside the cardboard box. I’m being held prisoner by something stronger than me. Because it’s too terrible — so unfair, so wrong — my heart, my blood, scream at me. But my body doesn’t move. It can’t.
My mother and father have a new child.
A son.
A new family.
They are a whole thing without me.
Mo’s voice echoes inside my head. “When people move on, they move on.”
My heart beats out seconds, then minutes. My body stays rooted. Nothing I say to myself works to get me to open the van door and climb out and run to where I most want to be.
Then the truth rushes at me, clear and cutting: I’m the mistake. The wrong one. I always have been. And I won’t be able to stop myself from making more mistakes. To helplessly hurt someone I love.
Deep, deep loneliness seeps into me, like storm water welling into a foundation and rising. I need to leave this family in its proper shape. I need to protect them from knowing the truth of me. Because I will only bring more weariness, more pain.
I can’t have what I want. That’s the problem. That’s the truth.
But I can bear to be alone. I know I can. I’ve done it my whole life.
Fear is supposed to be the worst thing. But it isn’t. The worst thing is when hope fills you up and then bleeds away. When hope is gone.
After a long time, I feel Jonah start the van again.
Idon’t watch where we’re going. But as we drive, I know I have to get somewhere else.
Leaving that lit-up house is elastic, me pulling myself away, with something equally strong pulling me back. I need to be strong enough to push until the elastic between me and my once-upon-a-time family snaps.
I can go back to Canada and find my train-hopping friends. They know me, they already welcomed me. When Jonah decides to head back to the island, I can ride back with him until we get across the border. Then I can leave him as soon as he stops somewhere and hop on a train back to Moncton. From the tr
ain yard, I know exactly how to get to the hobo house. That’s a place where I might belong. From the hobo house, maybe I can phone the island and let people know I’m okay. Maybe I can convince them to tell Marlie to leave.
It’s after 10:00 p.m. by the time Jonah stops driving again. He picked up some food from the window of a restaurant before we left town and the smell of burger and fries fills the van. My stomach rumbles and I shove my arms into it to muffle the sound.
We’re in a parking lot now. Through the back window I see a sign: Seacoast Motel, Vacancy. I know this is a place Jonah will want to sleep for the night. I’m relieved. I badly need water and something to eat. I am so so tired.
Jonah takes his bag of food with him when he goes to the motel office. A few minutes later, he comes out with a key that dangles from a wooden cut-out of a leaf. He walks along the front of the motel until he gets to the right room. Then he slips the key into the lock and goes through the door.
It’s always a relief when he’s gone — my breath works properly again.
I wait for a long time before getting out of the van. When I’m sure he’s settled in for the night, I let myself out, as insubstantial as a snail.
Around the motel, it’s very still. Only a couple of other cars parked by the rows of doors.
I wander to the road in front of the motel and look both ways. As far as my eye can see, it’s only darkness and trees. No little town, no other buildings. No place to buy water or food.
More thirsty, more hungry for knowing there’s nothing, I check around for garbage cans overflowing with half-eaten food, but there aren’t any.
At the edge of the woods behind the motel, there’s a puddle, and I’m so thirsty I consider drinking from it. Instead I suck dew off leaves. Inspecting everywhere, I find no answers to any wishes, and so try to make friends with my loneliness. I imagine we’ll be together for a long time.
For the first time since leaving the island, the sky is clear. Somehow the stars in this sky seem brighter than on the island. They seem to wink and blink at me. I find all the constellations I know. Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia.
The Darkhouse Page 17