Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  Willow watched the limbs and the magical spray of sunlight poking down through them. “I’ve never been here,” she said.

  “You were born here.” Julian ground the tip of another cigarette into the ashtray, gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and tried to put the memory of that night out of his mind. “You’ll be all right. I’ll be back for you tomorrow.”

  “You have to stay, too. I don’t want to stay alone.”

  He couldn’t answer.

  She pulled Doll to her chin, and her eyes filled. “I don’t want to stay.”

  Again, he didn’t answer, only stopped the car at the top of the drive, stepped out, and waited for her to slide under the steering wheel and exit using his door. The sight of the four wide stairs leading up to a massive porch, and his plan to leave her, made her scoot back across the seat away from him.

  Farthest House seemed looming even to Julian, and he ached to please Willow by getting back in the car and driving them straight home to Omaha, but they’d come this far. His mother waited, and he’d promised her. He did want to see her, and he was uneasy about the cold distance he’d kept all these years. Phone conversations, an occasional short visit from Tory or her, it hadn’t been enough. He’d only avoided facing the place where Jeannie died; she was still dead. But her bleeding out, the blood running no different than it did from a thug dying in the street, made no sense. If he just understood, but what? What did he need to see that he wasn’t seeing?

  “It’ll be all right,” he said, the words as much for himself as Willow. She needed women, some feminine influence. He’d drop her off, and when he returned tomorrow, he’d step inside the house and spend an hour or two.

  She saw his patient face, his tired face, his sad face, and even his wanting-away face all at once. “How come you don’t want to stay?”

  He took her bag from the back and bent down to look in at her. “Suit yourself, but I’m going up there.” He turned as if to leave.

  Despite her fear of being abandoned at the strange house, the safest place in the world was at his side, and though she knew she was doing exactly what he wanted, she didn’t want to be left alone. Using her heels to help pull herself, she worked back across the seat, hurrying to where she didn’t want to go. “I’m not staying, and anyway, how come you don’t want to stay?”

  Following him, she’d taken only a few steps before she stopped and stared at the house. She counted up the three rows of windows, a house as tall as her school, Our Lady of Supplication, and on that third floor was a small porch tree-top high. At the other end of the house, a wide glass turret like the turrets of picture-book castles rose from the ground to the roof. The sun broke partially through clouds, and the glass reflected a brilliant splash of light, sky, and shadow. In the moving reflection, Willow saw a silver and blue dragon climbing the turret.

  6

  Willow clutched Doll in her left hand, keeping her right tucked up and out of sight. Following Julian up the front steps, she moved as slowly as she dared. White wicker tables sat in shady corners on the porch and held pots of bushy red geraniums with green asparagus ferns spilling over the sides. Six wooden rockers, each painted a different bright color, sat lined in a row. They looked empty but quivered like breath, just enough to make her unsure. She hurried and caught Papa’s hand. She still didn’t want him to leave, but the house, even with the not-for-sure-empty rocking chairs and the glass dragon, felt good.

  Julian reached for the bell and hesitated. Was he really a guest? Before he decided to ring, or walk in, the front door with its thick leaded-glass panel opened. A brown and yellow dog, its long hair sweeping from side to side, sprung out at them. Willow let out a cry and hugged Julian’s waist.

  Twisting around Papa and away from the animal sniffing at her face, she first saw the woman’s long, gray skirt and the pinkish-orange sweater with orange buttons down the front. The last button was open because the woman’s stomach was a little bit fat. The woman, who was surely her grandmother, held a cane topped with a carved cat’s head. The feline’s yellow stone eyes peered out from between the woman’s curving fingers.

  Willow pushed at the dog, keeping her hand clear of its mouth, and watched the woman who stood in Papa’s arms. She fit under his chin. “It’s all right,” she heard the woman say, her voice against Papa’s chest. “It’s time you came home.”

  I let myself dwell a moment on the words: It’s all right and home. Would that ever be true again? If only I could have taken her into my arms, too. Luessy, my niece, my daughter.

  Neither Luessy, nor Julian, paid attention to how the dog tried to salve Willow’s sore cheek with its tongue. She pushed at the animal again. “Go away.”

  “Friar,” Luessy commanded. The dog stepped to her side and sat back on its haunches. She patted its coppery head, “You’ve found us a little girl.”

  The dog yapped as if speaking, and Willow believed the animal was lying, claiming it had found her. She kept tight against Julian’s leg. “Papa brought me in his car.”

  Luessy pointed. “You came in that car?”

  Pulling Willow in front of him, Julian planted his hands on her shoulders. “You remember your grandmother.”

  “I see my dreams are true,” Luessy said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “No, Ma,” Julian stopped her. “Willow’s got to live in this world.” His finger stabbed the air, pointing down at the porch floor. “She’s got to live in this world right here.” They’d had the same argument before, but when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “Here. Not in a world based on dreams and superstitions.”

  She remained as calm as the braid over her shoulder. “Your ancestors aren’t gone just because you’ve quit believing in them. You think I don’t know who she is?”

  “The dead are gone.”

  Luessy shrugged at Julian and bent to Willow. “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s just a couple of scratches,” he said.

  Willow’s mind flashed back to the fall, her chin striking the floor, the pain and the familiar smell of wax polish and then to the previous night when she also smelled floor wax. Papa had tucked her into bed, and after a few minutes, when she was sure he wasn’t coming back to kiss her again, she crawled onto the floor to sleep. There, she stared at the shadowy ceiling, her eyes finally closing and her mind drifting. Papa was there in her twilight sleep, walking back and forth at the foot of his bed, his face sad. He stopped, finally, his long legs folding like a grasshopper’s as he sank onto the small tapestry-covered stool in front of Jeannie’s vanity. His straight back bent forward, and he lifted Jeannie’s hairbrush, rubbing a thumb over the bristles, flattening them and letting them spring back one by one. He cried. A sound so quiet Willow needed to look hard at his trembling shoulders to be sure.

  Standing on the porch now, she knew he shouldn’t leave her, and he shouldn’t always be thinking about Jeannie. “My blood was in the sink,” she said to Luessy, “and all over the towel.”

  Julian chuckled. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was,” she insisted. He’d leave her now with the strange old woman whose dreams and visions he didn’t like. While she stayed, he’d go back to Omaha to be with the pictures of dead Jeannie on his bedroom walls. Willow hated them. They smiled at Papa from behind cold glass but never at her. The pictures, like the other things Jeannie left behind—as if she’d only gone to the store and would be right back—her hand mirror, lipstick, nail polish, perfumes, hairbrush, all stole Papa away.

  “It looks like you’ll heal just fine,” Luessy said of the cuts. “Will you call me Mémé?”

  My Luessy, or Mémé, French for grandmother, was an old woman now and still in her functional clothes—something I never could break her of. Her wrinkled skin reminded Willow of the Catechism she covered with a brown grocery sack in September and carried and crushed and stuffed into her bag until school ended just days before. She also saw sparkle in her mémé’s eyes, as though another kid played hide-an
d-seek from behind the wrinkles.

  “Come,” Luessy said to Julian, “say ‘hello,’ to your sister. Have a cup of tea with us.”

  With his hands still on Willow’s shoulders, he stiffened. Couldn’t they just chat for a minute on the porch? “You and Tory getting along these days?”

  “I have my work, and,” she suppressed a wry smile, “Tory has hers.”

  Julian chuckled again, “I’m sure her dolls make a lot of little girls happy.”

  Luessy’s expression changed. “Any news I can give Jonah?”

  “No,” Julian said, needing another cigarette. “I wish I had something.”

  “Well, come along.”

  “Not today.” What to say? “They’re expecting me at the station.”

  Willow’s heart kicked. She tucked Doll between her knees and not caring about her smaller hand, reached up with both, filling her fists with Julian’s thick fingers. She stared hard at the Jeannie bag he’d set on the porch floor, willing that Jeannie to make him change his mind. “You’re going to stay with me aren’t you, Papa?”

  Luessy studied her son. Her liver-spotted hand clutched and unclutched the cat’s head on top of her cane. “Jeannie’s not in there. It’s just the house where your mother and sister live.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and was sorry for things he couldn’t name. “We’ll talk tomorrow, when I pick her up.”

  “I’m sure you’re the best the precinct has, but a man needs more than his work. Even when he wins awards.”

  “Aren’t you the one always writing?” he asked. “Wrestling with plots and motives? Remember how you used to drill Tory and me on the criminal mind and red herrings? How many mysteries now? Two dozen?”

  Luessy’s emerald eyes sparkled. “I need to keep busy,” she said, “but what you need is a lady.”

  One hand slipped from Willow’s grasp, and he dropped it on her head like a heavy, too-large cap. “Here is my lady.” He hesitated, “Willow doesn’t know you. She’s likely to get homesick and —”

  Raising a curved finger, Luessy stopped him. “She needs to learn who she is. No one owns a child. She belongs to the family, to all the ancestors responsible for her being here.”

  Though she didn’t fully understand the words, Willow understood enough to frown. She and Papa were a whole family. No one else could be in it.

  His hand slid off her head, down over her shoulder, and halfway to her elbow. He pulled her up against him, the hug lifting her onto her toes. He reached, hugged his mother, and started down the steps.

  “Papa!” Her scream struck his back. She saw the flinch of his shoulders beneath his shirt, but then he hurried even faster. She screamed again, but he went around the front of the car and opened the door. She started after him, but Luessy bent over her, and the cat-head cane landed thick and sure as a post on the white porch floor, smack between her Keds. The movement excited Friar, and he jumped up and came around to help block Willow’s way, licking her face as if Luessy had given the command.

  By the time Willow squirmed away, Papa’s car was rolling into the shady tunnel of trees, light and shadow sliding over the top and trunk, leaving her at the place that made him run away.

  Luessy tapped her cane to the edge of the porch. She watched the car leave the drive, turn back onto Old Squaw Road, and vanish around the curve. “He’s still in pain,” she said. “Losing your mother weighs on him.” Her eyes remained on the empty drive. “Jeannie turned bad so quickly, and there was nothing he could do to save her. He believed he could protect a city, but he failed to save his wife. It’s blaming himself that won’t let him heal.” She forced herself to turn back and smile. “My moons dried up so long ago, it’s hard to believe that man came from my body. I remember being stretched like a pear though, my skin too tight instead of too loose.”

  Willow knew no one had moons, dried up or not. She quit pushing at Friar, and the dog stood at her side, wagging his tail back and forth. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said.

  “It’s time you were back. I didn’t go through all the pain of squeezing out two wet seals not to have one of them give me a grandchild. You and I need time while I’m still here.” She rapped the tip of her cane on the porch floor. “In this world.” She started down the stairs Julian just descended. “Come and see how our flowers are doing.”

  Doll smelled of Papa’s cigarettes, and Willow stood unmoving, inhaling the scent. Mémé didn’t match anything, but Friar was nice. His tail never stopped wagging, and his breath smelled stinky. She’d tell Mary Wolfe because Mary didn’t have a dog. Maybe, Mary didn’t even have a grandmother with a cat cane and twinkling eyes and a long braid hanging over her shoulder. Willow frowned, not wanting to think of good things. She hadn’t agreed to stay.

  Luessy reached the bottom stair. “You and I are old family. In time, you’ll understand the circle doesn’t break.”

  Goose bumps peppered Willow’s arms. Mémé’s orange sweater stretched over her back. A misshapen back, a bumpy back, not flat like on pretty people. “You should get fixed.”

  A large smile broke across Luessy’s face, widening her lips and showing her old teeth. “I’ve become a crone, haven’t I?”

  Willow had meant to be a little bit mean, but Mémé’s smile was so big she didn’t need to be fixed. In Willow’s mind, Mémé knew a secret about being broken that made it all right. Watching her, Willow felt as if she almost knew the secret, too. She let the fingertips of her right hand peek out from her sweater cuff. Then more. With her whole hand out, and Mémé still smiling, her mouth not going into an O, Willow started down the steps. At the bottom, she offered the weaker hand to Mémé. The two of them almost matched.

  7

  They moved at Luessy’s relishing pace around the corner and alongside the manor. With each step gained, I felt myself growing heavier, but Luessy was happy and used her cane to point: “Boxwood hedges, George Tabor Azaleas, peonies, Damask roses.”

  To Willow, who wasn’t listening to the plant names, Mémé smelled something like the powder and perfumes still on Jeannie’s dresser. This made Mémé almost a match to all the things Willow wanted when she closed her eyes in the dark, or snuck into Papa’s room and licked the glass over Jeannie’s pictures and tried to taste her.

  “After all these years,” Luessy said, “you’ll need new paints.”

  Before Willow could ask if Mémé really was going to buy her paints, Mémé stopped and looked upward. The corners of her mouth turned down. Willow frowned, too.

  Standing on a second-story porch was a skinny woman with thin folded arms. Her nose and eyes resembled Papa’s, but Papa smiled at people, and his black hair wasn’t pulled back as tight as a swim cap.

  Luessy tugged Willow’s hand. “Come on, don’t mind her.”

  They’d gone only a few feet when Willow glanced back, hoping that this time she’d see the woman smiling. The porch was empty. The woman had vanished as if she’d never been.

  “Your aunt,” Luessy said. “She doesn’t go by Victoria now. She’s chopped off her name like a goddess her hair. She’s Tory. Just the butt end of a beautiful name.”

  “My name is a tree.”

  “Yes, I remember. I’ll show you the tree. I’m glad your father settled on Willow and left off the ‘weeping.’ I think he’s keeping that part for himself.” The thought of Julian’s unhappiness tightened her chest. “It takes time, still, by now.”

  “That lady doesn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t know who you are. She’s angry with me, though she stays right here. Same as the child’s handprints she pressed into the walk decades ago.”

  Luessy bent, pulled a small weed in their path, and rubbed the dirt from her fingers on her skirt. “I don’t know what went wrong,” she continued. “I think both my children are dragging around bones. Tory is waiting to inherit this place, but those old handprints aren’t a hold on a piece of land. Not like birth string.”

  “What’s that?”


  “Don’t mind me. I was remembering the night you were born, that’s all. Stars roaring so bright I could barely tolerate the noise. Birth and death mixed up. Nothing solid, and those stars.”

  Willow knew she’d eventually have to go inside the house, and when she did, the skinny woman would be there. For comfort, she reached out and touched Friar whenever his back and forth trotting brought him close enough. She also let her eyes take sidelong glances at Mémé’s back and the bump larger than her own. “How come you look like that?”

  “Life grows a woman down. One day, she’s as bowed as a spent flower. Not to worry though, that’s when she’s strongest. She loves mightily, and she creates. She’s alive here,” Luessy’s finger touched her forehead and then tapped her wool sweater over her heart, “and here. When a body curls, a woman knows it’s time to start making plans, giving away her things.”

  “Why?”

  “She needs the space to journey inside. The clutter’s too cumbersome.”

  Willow pressed her lips together. Her mouth wanted to tell Mémé she talked funny, but the issue of Mémé’s back was more important. “How come a doctor can’t fix you?”

  “There’s no hocus pocus for old age; I don’t need to be fixed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Your father isn’t still hunting doctors for you?”

  “They can’t fix me.”

  They reached knee-high lavender growing wide and round alongside the flagstone path. The swish of Luessy’s skirt against the small, dusty-green stems and leaves sent perfume into the air. “Our bodies are memory,” Luessy said. “Unfinished work. Your back is what’s right with you. And mine? Well, by the time you’ve reached my age, you’ll have seen such a world of sorrow and nonsense you’ll know you’re something just for staying. A dowager’s hump means I’ve been blessed with a long life. I’m proud of that.” She paused, “Besides, one person looks silly as the next. I don’t care how beautiful they suppose they are.”