Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  Willow waited for Mary to tap the glass and announce herself. She didn’t want to rush for Mary or to be caught looking; both acts would seem needy. Minutes passed. The motion at the window moved, Mary looked in, hid, looked in again. As Willow wondered and then realized what Mary was doing, gloom invaded the small room. Mary stood in the cold, her body pressed against the house, snow falling on her head. She hadn’t come for companionship; she’d come to peek in on a freak show. Like staring at the nine-foot man in the Guinness’s Book of World Records, or the nameless and topless African women in National Geographic.

  The minutes continued to unspool. Just out in front of Willow, the unfolding of what she would do next waited dark and cold. All females experience caves, I thought. They carry caves within themselves.

  Willow’s heart was heavy. She slowly closed my watercolor journal and let her palm rest a moment on the front cover. She tried to gather her will, but she was disfigured to match her soul, Mémé was dead, and Mary wanted to see a freak.

  Willow moved over to the light switch, put the room in darkness, and crossed her floor to raise the window. The cold air, indigo and silver with night and snow, sharp and aching, rolled into the room. Willow turned back to her bed on leaden feet, and while Friar watched her, she pulled off her sweatshirt to lie face down, offering her back to Mary.

  I saw myself entering The Beast’s chamber. Not because my mother had pushed this time or he gripped my arm and drug me, but because I was empty. With what substance could I have refused even his verbal commands?

  The whisper of Mary’s jeans brushing over the sill and the squeak of nylon sliding under the wire screen were sounds as cold as snow. Friar padded to the door of Willow’s room, not leaving, but watching at a distance from Mary. Then Mary’s breath, as she stood over the bed, and Willow’s gasp at Mary’s freezing touch—knife cold. Around and around the blade of Mary’s finger traced, while Willow shivered in shame.

  16

  Five months passed in which Mary didn’t visit Willow, though she often visited Sister Dominic Agnes. The three were caught in a web, and when the aging nun and Mary fought against the strings trapping them, the strings on Willow’s side of the web tightened. I had only to look across to see Sister Dominic Agnes, ever thinner and paler and more bent at her kneeler, and the black chain hanging heavily above her. When the first graders left in the afternoon, she turned off the lights, lowered herself, and prayed. Weekends too, in the dark, the room had the air of a chapel. Mary slipped into the somber space feeling fitted to the dark and welcome under the funeral chain velvet with dust. They prayed for Mary’s vocation, that she could come to accept God’s call, and they talked of the days when the paper chain had been new and people paraded in and out to see it, and the two of them had felt most alive.

  Winter moved into spring. Though Mary hadn’t visited Willow recently, the memory of the last time, the circling, chiseling in of pain, self-doubt, and shame, continued dragging an icy finger over Willow’s back. On the night of Spring Prom, she tried again to fill the hours with painting, though finding that deeper space where time passed with no awareness was nearly impossible. Her mind sagged with worry and longing. Mary, and nearly everyone else she knew, had dates and danced in beautiful spaghetti-strapped gowns.

  After eleven, she put down her brushes and sat on the bed to study the pale canvas. With one arm around Friar, she asked him what he thought. The picture she struggled to copy was Pandora, by the French painter Lefebvre. She’d been working on the painting in her free time for over a week, and one of Pandora’s legs still looked seriously off kilter. On another night, she might have scraped off some of the paint and worked another two or three hours, but the thought of Mary possibly showing up, as she had after the Christmas Prom, crowding the room with her odors of dancing and drinking, filled Willow with dread and shame.

  The best tactic was to turn out the light and go to bed. If Mary came, she’d see the dark window and leave. Sweeping her brushes back and forth through turpentine, Willow kept one eye on the painting. The first-woman of the Greek’s definitely looked tipsy and ghostly. The oils and acrylics Papa brought from Farthest House were gone. A tiny bit of white remained, smidgeons of a couple of colors, but most tubes were so flat they looked sucked dry. Still others were rolled up as tightly as wire bands around Spam keys. She kept them, needing them the way Julian needed his newspapers. On her saddest days, she picked them up, felt their pinched and squeezed hard surfaces, read their exotic names, and imagined holding full tubes.

  “Care only to work,” Mémé had said, and Willow wouldn’t let the lack of optimal painting supplies keep her from that.

  Their small house felt large and empty as she and Friar walked past Papa’s doorway and through the kitchen to where she opened the door, and he went out to lift his leg on the big tree in their yard. When he finished, she locked the back door, something Papa never bothered to do. She locked the front door, as well, and turned out the room’s light, watching how the newspapers seemed to hold illumination a second longer. Passing Julian’s room again, she paused to look in. He lay shirtless in his worn jeans and atop his blankets, his bottom ribs visible, his face in the dark, stony and smudged in shadows, and his hair graying and too long falling back from his sharp-edged face. She’d already begun to think of him as disappearing, and now in the dim light, he looked half erased. Creditors called daily, at least they had before the telephone was shut off, and Papa was anxious about everything.

  She pulled herself away and hurried on. She wasn’t still a child. She could take care of things. She’d applied for a job at the nearest art store, right on the number 2 bus route, and if they hired her, she could help with groceries. More importantly, she’d be aware of every sale, every damaged tube of paint headed for the trash, and she’d have an employee discount. If only they hired her, she’d never be out of paint again.

  In her room, close to Mother Moses, she double-checked the locks on both her windows, and as Friar finished circling on the bed and dropped rump-first with a sigh, she turned off the light and crawled in. Friar snored soon enough, but she tossed, rolling right and left, and finally staring up at the ceiling. She acted horrible the night of the Christmas Prom, rolling over like a dog and exposing herself, so needy she let Mary go on and on with her emotional mauling while snow melted off Mary’s shoes and onto the floor.

  The shameful memory made Willow take up her pillow and move to the floor, though she couldn’t explain why. Friar stepped off the bed, joined her there, and she wrapped her right arm around his neck.

  Even half expecting it, the tapping on her window made her jump. She looked at the clock: 12:52. Mary. Why always on nights when the rest of her group surely lied about spending the night at friends’ houses and were coupled up four to a bed in motel rooms? Was that it? Was Mary afraid of those situations? The drinking and the sex? More afraid than walking in the dark in the middle of the night? When a car could stop, pull her inside, and no one would see it happen?

  The tapping turned to knocking and finally pounding. Willow kept hold of Friar, keeping him quiet and on the floor, while she prayed the banging would stop before it woke Papa. The noise only increased, and as Mary pressed against the window, her dark silhouette grew.

  Willow held her breath, not hearing Julian’s bare footfalls over the pounding. She noticed him only when he appeared at the door of her room. Too late to rush back into bed. She shut her eyes tight, clenched her teeth and feigned sleep. When Friar pulled free to go to Julian, she had to let him go.

  The pounding stopped. The arms of the shadow rose and cupped its shadowed mouth. “Fucking bitch!”

  Willow’s heart seized. The name-calling would hurt Papa, make him worry. Here was another something hurled at him: her unpopularity. Something he couldn’t fix, only carry.

  “Fucking bitch!” Mary screamed again, “I’ve always hated you.”

  The window cleared, and the soft glow from the nearby streetlight settled again o
n the glass. A June bug, caught between the window and the screen, whirled and buzzed in distress, and still Julian lingered, listening to the insect, making sure the figure at the window wasn’t returning, and watching his teenage daughter curled on the floor. He hadn’t seen her there in years. Friar sat on his haunches staring up at him, and he petted the dog’s head. He didn’t know how to help Willow. “Go on,” he whispered. “Stay with her.”

  As I watched the boy I helped raise, grown now into a beautiful man, drink from a bottle in his room, I thought of my instructions to Tory. “Sip, sip,” I said. “Forget this.”

  The following forenoon, Willow stood at the kitchen sink, holes under the arms of her old T-shirt and in the knees of her sweatpants. Using her fingernail, she scratched at the dried on grit in a soup bowl. Neither she, nor Julian, cared much about food: Campbell’s soup still kept them alive. Willow even preferred painting while hungry. She was convinced that on an empty stomach she could work for more hours without tiring and that hunger kept her mind sharp. An emaciated model with large eyes, so like a victim in a concentration camp, was all the rage. Twiggy had even recently recorded her first album.

  At the table behind Willow, Julian ground out the stub of his cigarette. “I’m going to pick up a few things.”

  She rinsed the bowl in her hand. Cigarettes and wine, there was always money for those. She was out of sanitary pads and pinned washcloths to her underwear. She washed them out at night and spread the stained squares under her bed to dry. Papa hadn’t mentioned the midnight incident, hadn’t asked how school was going or if she had any friends, hadn’t said, “We’re showing ’em.” He smoked more than usual that morning, snapped his newspapers with unnecessary force, and avoided looking at her. She was thankful; she couldn’t have explained Mary to him. She didn’t understand Mary herself.

  By the time the taillights of his rusted Ford rounded the corner at the end of the block, Mary crossed the porch and slipped through the unlocked door. “Why didn’t you let me in last night?”

  Willow turned. Beautiful Mary. Less than twelve hours earlier, Willow wanted nothing to do with her, but in the hours since, she’d heard Mary scream “bitch” over and over and felt Papa’s gloom. Mary with her bright hair, eyes, and clothes, represented the good stuff: money, beauty, and popularity. How could Willow turn her back on that, cutting off her only possible lifeline to the world where teenagers lived in the safety of numbers, never alone like herself? What she and Mary shared was crazy and stupidly painful, and yet, here Mary was again, the second time in hours, wanting something. Friendship? She’d called Willow a “fucking bitch,” but did she even remember? Had she been drunk? Was she visiting now, in daylight, to apologize?

  “Why didn’t I let you in?” Willow repeated the question, as if she’d been trying to remember the reason. “I wasn’t home. A couple of us without dates had a sleep over.”

  “Liar.” She started for Willow’s room, the long ties of her white espadrilles winding up her ankles, her pink shorts and sleeveless pink silk blouse with its mandarin collar making Willow vow that once out of high school and away, she’d copy Mary’s style: every blouse and sweater. She might even learn to stroke her neck like Mary, as though absent-mindedly petting some fine, porcelain thing.

  The bedroom was thick with heat and humidity, and the heaviness added to its over-crowding. The large easel, the table holding art supplies, her bed, the boxes of books, and the dresser all looked pathetic to Willow. Adding to the muddle was the wallpaper with its close and untidy mass of static and discoloring ducks.

  Standing in front of the easel, Mary’s gaze went from the Pandora painting to White Mask leaning against the wall and back to Pandora. “You’re just like everyone else.”

  The picture looked no better to Willow than it had the night before, and she considered how she’d have to start at the hip and paint the entire leg over again, maybe start as high as the waist.

  “Sex is the only thing people think about,” Mary said.

  “That’s not sex. Haven’t you ever looked in an art book?”

  “She’s naked under that see-through…, whatever.”

  Mary’s eyes were especially pale and cold, winter blue and titanium white. Willow wanted to blame the pallid color on the sunlight coming through the windows.

  “My parents,” Mary said, “would kill me if I painted something like that.”

  Mary was jealous, and Willow hoped the pride she felt wasn’t spreading over her face. Her art was her single comeuppance. It was little in comparison to Mary’s beauty, to the silk blouses, her friends, and the dances. But it was something. “Why’d you come over last night? Not enough compliments on your prom dress?”

  “I still want that painting.” She pointed to White Mask. “You’ve had it long enough.”

  “That’s not why you came. At least, it’s not the whole reason.”

  Mary turned, lifting both hands and slamming the heels into Willow’s chest, sending her stumbling backwards, just missing Friar, nearly catching herself with an arm on the bed but not, feeling like Mo and Curly and Larry in a slapstick routine, then landing on her behind with a plop and an elbow smacking the floor. Surprised by the duration of her fall and how ungracefully she’d gone down, she started to laugh. “You are cra-Azy!”

  Friar rose, his eyes sharp as he gave one quick bark in Mary’s direction.

  “That dog hates me,” she said. “Get rid of him.”

  Willow’s palms dampened, “What?”

  Mary’s arms swung, motioning around the room. “At least I have a life. I don’t spend it in this hovel, painting naked women.”

  Willow might still have laughed. She’d survived the dumbest fall ever, and Mary couldn’t paint at all. She wanted to tell Mary to calm down, but Mary’s words also held a truth Willow couldn’t deny. Only a single year of high school remained, which meant she was about to lose something she’d not yet tasted. For three years she’d been telling herself, “Next year,” but like the ducks, she never gained an inch of ground. Now, with her junior year ending, next year was her last chance.

  Rising from the floor she had a daring thought. “Maybe, we could,” she took a deep breath, “go out some night. A double date. You and Derrick, and me with one of his friends.”

  Mary faced the painting, but Willow’s request made her pivot slowly again, her brows pinching. “You’re kidding, right?”

  A door Willow dared to open slammed shut. “For someone who can’t be seen with me, you sure visit a lot.”

  A draft passed through Mary’s eyes, and they seemed to empty even of the sickly blue. Willow drew back. Wolf eyes. She expected fangs and fur to appear. Afraid of enraging the eyes any more than she already had, she kept her voice low. “You don’t come to see me. You don’t even like being here. So why does perfect Mary visit me?”

  Just as Willow thought Mary meant to use both hands to hit her again, Mary’s expression changed, her face softening, nearly crumbling into tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t hate you.” She paused, “Tell me about this painting.”

  The flame of anger Willow had seen only the second before and the effort Mary took now to rein it in was frightening. Did Papa need to know that Mary had been the one at the window, and that she changed personalities as quickly as a pair of shoes?

  Not wanting to see the colorless eyes again, playing along, acting as though nothing happened and talking about the painting, seemed safest. Papa would be back soon and Mary would go, hopefully for another five months.

  “Pandora’s story?” Who didn’t know that? She’d make up a very quick version, but first, she ran her thumb and forefinger across her lips as though zipping Mary’s. “Pandora is the first version of the Eve myth.”

  “You’re still on that?”

  “You asked.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Pandora and Eve both wanted knowledge, a life bigger than what they had, something they weren’t supposed to want.”

  Mary pointe
d to White Mask. “Like her?”

  Willow hadn’t thought to include White Mask, and it surprised her that Mary did. “Yeah. Eve and Pandora were both supposedly living in Paradise; they were both called the first woman, and they were both accused of letting evil into the world. Though that evil had obviously already been created by someone. Had to be God, right?”

  Mary watched her.

  “If Eve and Pandora had really been in Paradise, they’d have been perfectly happy, with faces and knowledge. So whose paradise was it?” No reaction from Mary, and Willow considered what she’d just said. She was starting to sound like Mémé. “Anyway, Eve and Pandora are the same story. The End.”

  “She’s a whore.”

  Cold brushed across Willow’s shoulders, and she glanced out the room’s street-facing window and onto the empty street. What was taking Papa so long? She wanted to say, It’s just a crappy painting, Mary, no one’s in competition with you, but she didn’t dare. Mary frightened her. Even joking felt dangerous.

  But Mary wasn’t always like this, not this mean, and Willow thought of the day she’d felt so much anger and upset that she destroyed Jeannie’s pictures, the pot handle like a knife in her hands. Mary was hurting; they matched. They both had weeping places, deep and unseen. But what could the source of Mary’s pain be? “Is your mom sick or something?”

  Mary’s fingers drew quotation marks in the air. “She ‘worries’ about me. ‘Worries.’” Her hands came down, and she looked hard at Willow. “Does your dad know you painted that?”

  Willow shrugged. “He hasn’t seen it, but I know he doesn’t care what I paint.”

  “Does he know you show me your back?”

  From my place, I shuddered watching the two teenagers, remembering Julian and Tory at that age. Was there no end to the sources of pain?