Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  Willow’s heart also leapt at seeing the pair. She hurried out to them. She’d not expected Tory until the following morning or afternoon, if Tory decided to come at all. She’d not imagined Mable.

  Tory held a potted Easter lily with several yellow-throated blooms. Willow thought her chin and nose had sharpened in the ten years since Mémé’s funeral. Her hair held streaks of gray now, but she still wore it the same strict way, wrapped tightly and pinned in a chignon, low on the back of her neck. For all the ways age made her more austere, Willow saw no change in her intense gaze. Still piercing, Willow felt seen-through. There was nothing to explain. What didn’t those eyes already know?

  Mable wore a smoky-blue shawl over her round shoulders, and like Tory’s light-weight trench, it proved a warm front had moved in behind the freezing rain. Mable looked more the peach, flushed and soft in a creamy caftan. Unlike Tory’s long, pointed shoes, Mable paddled in wide, sturdy shoes beneath thick ankles. “It’s terrible,” Mable said before she could draw a handkerchief from a pocket in her shawl and catch the two tears that rolled down her round cheeks.

  Both women glanced at the window, but Willow felt protective of Papa. He wouldn’t want to be seen. “They don’t want you in there. You’d have to suit up.”

  Tory insisted. Changed into scrubs, she stood dry-eyed, staring mutely at her brother, though the muscles around her mouth looked full of the unspoken. When she was six and Julian four, she often dressed him in her clothes, an act she believed made him more fully hers. She liked him in polka dots, red or blue. She liked him in pink. She told him, “No, you mustn’t,” when he wanted too many cookies. She found his mittens on winter mornings before she found her own. She tasted his cocoa to be sure it wasn’t too hot. She huffed at Luessy, or me, when we carried him to his own bed or replaced her little dresses with small navy sweater vests and clip-on bow ties.

  When she emerged from Julian’s room, she surprised Willow. “Mable will stay for as long as you need her. Who has your baby now?”

  Willow hesitated, Prairie wouldn’t be as safe with Mable as she was with Red. “She’s with a friend.”

  Tory nodded, then pinned Willow with a commanding look. “We’re family.”

  Willow wanted to protest: Red has a gun. Taking advantage of him wasn’t fair, though, and at any rate, he’d already left Prairie with his wife. Prairie wasn’t riding around in the safety of his police car, Red’s wife most likely did not carry a gun, and who knew how caring or resentful she was of having to babysit Prairie. And poor Prairie probably wanted the bed and toys and surroundings she knew.

  “It’s all right,” Mable said at Willow’s hesitation. “I don’t mind staying. Taking care of a little one will be a nice change of pace.”

  “It’s not you,” Willow said. She looked away and down the long hall, trying to think. Mable was almost family; Red wasn’t. His boys, redheaded monsters when she was a kid, would be teenagers now. Probably demons that would as soon run over Prairie as step around her.

  Willow sighed, “Okay.”

  The morning of the second day, Willow woke in her chair by Julian’s bed to Tory tapping again on the glass. They sat across the hall in a small lounge, Tory in tailored pants, her legs crossed and the top leg hanging motionless and sleek as a spindle. Calm. So calm, that I felt cold snaking through me.

  “Farthest House is such a large place,” Tory said. “Seeing you again, and Julian….” her voice trailed off, and for a moment she was quiet. “Well, it’s all made me consider.”

  Distracting odors rose from the scrubs Willow wore. Was it the tang of Papa’s seared hair, burned flesh the doctors hadn’t cut away, seeping bandages, or decaying lung tissue?

  “I’d like for you and Prairie,” Tory said, “to come and spend some time with me when…well, when this is over.”

  Nothing short of Julian standing and walking out with her sounded as wonderful to Willow as spending time again at Farthest House. But surely Tory wasn’t asking them for more than afternoon tea?

  “Spend the summer with me,” Tory said. “You love the house, and you’ll need the rest.”

  Shivers raked down Willow’s arms. “I love Farthest House, but,” she took a breath and found she was crying yet again. Papa, though on the brink of death, was still alive, and she didn’t want to talk of a time when he wouldn’t be. “Right now, I can’t think about the next hour, let alone the next weeks.”

  “Nonsense,” Tory said. “You must think ahead. You have a child. Don’t try and get through this alone. It’s too much.” Her voice softened. “The Damasks will bloom soon. I remember how much your mother loved them.”

  “Jeannie loved the roses?”

  “They were part of why she came to stay those last weeks of her pregnancy.”

  Willow wondered why she hadn’t been told this before. Jeannie not only smelled and cut roses off the same bushes Willow had, she walked the same cobblestone paths, sat in the same blue-tufted chairs, studied the same photographs and botanical prints on the walls, ate off the same plates, and likely had her own floral china cup.

  Tory stood to leave, reaching down and squeezing Willow’s forearm. “Spend the summer. Give yourself and Prairie at least that much time.”

  There were a dozen questions Willow wanted to ask. Unlike Papa, Tory might actually give answers. Tory had been in the house, if not in the room, when Jeannie died. She knew whether or not Jeannie had fought death, whether or not Jeannie had asked to hold her newborn.

  Through the afternoon, Willow sat beside Julian listening to the barely audible but mechanical sounds of the machines monitoring and keeping him alive. In places, the skin on his shoulder nearest her had rolled back like thick brown potato peels. She feared that even touching him might cause pain. She folded her hands, resting them on the bed, letting only the tips of her knuckles make contact. “Tory came to see you. She told me Jeannie loved your mom’s roses. You never told me.”

  After dark, when the hallways cleared of visitors and the nurses changed shifts and the new ones made their fussing noises over monitors and charts, Willow’s heavy eyes closed. All day she’d wanted to open the door to Papa’s room, swing her arms wildly, and shoo out Death. If only such a thing were possible. As her tired head bobbed into exhausted sleep, she dreamed Death was still in the room, pacing at the foot of the bed. The dream and Death morphed, as her sleep deepened, and Death became a black and winged raven that vanished through the ceiling, only to swoop over the city in block-wide swaths, searching.

  She woke with a start. Death looked for Prairie!

  It was only a dream, she promised herself, but an hour later she still paced, warring with her fears. She didn’t want to leave Papa, but the dream, lucid and chilling, clung to her. She hurried for the elevator and her car.

  Mable sat on the red sofa watching Johnny Carson sign off for the night. Seeing Willow, her eyes widened. Her face paled, and she turned off the set.

  “No,” Willow said, reading her concern, “it’s not over.” She hadn’t yet signed the papers authorizing them to remove his tubes. She’d only agreed to do so after the last consultation, when the doctor said, “I’m sorry.”

  Mable studied her. “You look exhausted. You were right to come home and get some sleep.”

  Willow dropped her car keys onto the table and let her gaze linger a moment on the crones. She wouldn’t confess her nightmare. “I’m not staying; I just need a minute with Prairie.”

  In the dark bedroom, she crawled up the bed on her knees and bent over the side of the crib. Prairie slept on her back, her head to one side, her tiny lips parted, her arms flung out—innocent, unafraid. Willow listened to the little sweeps of sound purring in and out of her throat. She ran fingers through Prairie’s hair and down her cheeks, using long, soft strokes, the motion she used to fill her brushes with oils, taking up warm brown, moonglow, the palest magenta. She wanted Prairie’s pink on her hands, to take the blush back with her to Papa’s room where she could look dow
n at her fingers and palms and see that Prairie’s living had stayed with her.

  Mable came to the bedroom doorway, her figure blocking much of the already dim light. “She’s fine.”

  Still leaning over Prairie’s crib, still stroking Prairie’s cheek, Willow only nodded.

  “I made tea earlier. Would you have a cup with me?”

  Sitting at the table, she watched as Mable poured warm tea into chipped mugs and then lifted a dishtowel on fresh-baked cookies made with figs and oatmeal.

  “You went to the store?” Willow’s voice sounded sharp, and she regretted that, but taking Prairie out was dangerous.

  “We are getting on fine.”

  From the wall, the crones watched. Willow picked up her cup, the liquid trembling with the shaking in her hands. Her world felt draped in black: paper chains, shadow beings, vultures, and Death in his robes.

  “I know it’s bad,” Mable said. “It’s awful to lose a parent.”

  “I’ve got a horrible feeling something else is going to happen. This time to Prairie.” Putting her fears into words, added to them, fleshed them out, and gave them power. She tried to force her mind off Prairie. “How do the doctors know he’s not in incredible pain? Even with the morphine, how can they be sure?” She set the cup down and picked up a cookie. She felt famished, and yet, she couldn’t eat. “The house was set on fire. I know who did it.”

  Mable’s eyes widened. “You’ve told the police?”

  “I tried. She’s smart. She probably crawled in through the window of my old bedroom, lit a cigarette, and tossed it onto the sofa.”

  Mable watched Willow breaking the cookie and then breaking the pieces. “I’m sure that can’t be true.”

  When the cookie lay in a pile of crumbs, Willow spoke. “Maybe my ex has stayed away because he’s scared of Papa.” She looked toward the bedroom door. “He might try to take her now.” She stood, walked the few steps to the nearest window, and looked down on the dark street. “The Crats are rich; it wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

  “You mean he’s likely to want full custody?” Mable asked. “After this long? Children are a lot of work.” She reached over with a wide hand and pulled Willow’s cookie pieces from the table’s edge. “If he wants some visitation, wouldn’t that be good for Prairie?”

  “Not if his girlfriend is a murderer! He’s moved, according to his mother, but Papa’s death could bring him back. The fire proves she’s never going to quit.”

  Explaining to Mable what deformity could do to a person’s mind was impossible.

  “I’ll take care of Prairie,” Mable said. “Go and be with Julian. You can tell all this to the police in the morning.”

  Willow twisted strands of her hair. She felt torn, not wanting to be away from Prairie and hating the minutes away from Julian. “How will we live without him?”

  Mable sniffled, reaching for her second cookie. “How do we survive life? But we do.”

  Hearing the sadness in Mable’s voice made Willow ask, “Were you ever married?” Talking about something other than her fears felt welcome.

  “I never married. My prince is still alive, but life didn’t have us marry.”

  “He’s with someone else?” Willow was prying, and she sat back down. “I’m sorry, this isn’t my business,” she reached for another cookie.

  Mable’s hand slapped Willow’s so quick the cookie fell back on the plate. She pointed to the door, the flesh on her underarm swinging. “You’re worrying about too much. You can’t control it all. When the centipede realized he had a hundred legs to control, he fell down. Far as I know, he’s still down. Just go and be with your father.”

  31

  The nighttime corridor leading back to Papa’s room was vacant. Doors to patient’s rooms were only slightly ajar and the overhead lights dim. She paused at the nurse’s station, picked up the pen offered her, and with a trembling hand signed the papers. She walked over waxed floors and through air tasting of aluminum. The sound manufactured was unearthly.

  The chair in Julian’s room had been pushed back from his bed and his over-head lights were turned off. Only the dim glow of a monitor screen, its sharp-edged pulses cast light on him, not illuminating as much as shrouding. Lying like stone on the white slab of his bed, his wrappings and skin oyster-colored, she thought of pictures she’d seen of ancient sarcophagi.

  He would die now. She’d signed papers, and he’d already stepped partially away. Her knowing was keen and terrible. Others were there, too, invisible, but as present as she. They came from their violet world, just as they had at Mémé’s death, ready to take up his hands, ready to take him away from her.

  She approached his bed, whispered softly into his ear. “Angels are coming tonight.” She tried to control her sudden gasping. How did a daughter breathe alongside her father’s death? Alongside the terrible awful face that was still Papa?

  Through the chain of relentless hours since the fire, she’d worried about how much pain he was suffering, once even praying that he found a quick release from charred skin and muscle. Now, knowing that he would leave her, she wanted to recant that prayer.

  She pulled the chair back to him and sank into it, her knees so close they pressed hard against the cold bed frame. The last time she saw Papa whole, he sat at her table eating her cheap flour noodles and holding Prairie. Now this, all for having let Mary in the house that first time, getting into Derrick’s car, and spreading her legs for him.

  She lifted her right hand, wanting the weaker, wounded limb in his, but she stopped. The wrappings on his arms, and then his hands, looked like papier-mâché clubs, and he might feel pain if she clutched him. She trailed a finger alongside his arm, over the ghostly sheet, and finally lowered her head onto the bed, resting her cheek so close to his shoulder she could feel his warmth. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure a picture of how his face looked before. When she was a toddler, he tossed her in the air, and for airborne seconds, she looked down at him grinning up at her, his arms extended to catch her. She’d try to keep hold of that picture, the healthy, happy father who loved to make her fly.

  She ached to start babbling about how much she needed him and how much Prairie needed her grandfather, even if only for a few more days. But how much pain, she asked herself, would she have him go through in order to postpone her loss?

  Someone dressed in white entered the room, but she closed her eyes, not wanting to see a physical man or woman. More sobbing than speaking, she tried to tell Papa again, “Angels are coming tonight.” A hand brushed across her back, and a voice asked if she was ready.

  She didn’t watch the tube being extracted from his throat or the wires being disconnected, and she didn’t look up at the person who left with no more than a whisper of soft shoes. Papa would go to Jeannie, now.

  He mumbled.

  Her heart kicked, and she lifted her head to look at him. Her flicker of hope—that they might have a last bit of communication—died. The distorted face, not his, was quiet, and even without the breathing tube, he couldn’t have spoken. “Papa, I’m right here.”

  I should have killed him.

  Clear and sharp with regret, the words hadn’t come from his mouth. They leapt and she caught them in the old way. She closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, trying to still the trembling. How could he, with his mind half freed and wizened with full sight, be thinking of Derrick? She stood, paced, and looked back at his dying form. Did he hate Derrick that much? Or was he so afraid of what Derrick would do? Her heart pounded, what was he seeing?

  She forced herself to sit again, and she worked to keep her voice steady. “You don’t have to worry about Derrick. You protected us, Papa. We’re safe now.”

  Long minutes melted gray into gray, and she was certain she could feel his body cooling. “Willow,” she coaxed. “Say Willow.” A part of her was dying, too. In so many ways, a daughter was slain when her father no longer lived to speak her name into the world, no longer held the space o
f it open, insisted on it. “Say, Willow.”

  There was only silence and the crowding. She wanted to push at them, shout, tell them to go away, and give her more time. She thought of Mémé’s death and how Mémé had dropped blue.

  On the small table outside his door were the flowers the hospital hadn’t allowed into his IC unit. She stepped out, took the ribbon from each, tied the two together, and went back in. Careful not to bump his hand, she draped one end of the ribbon over and around the bandages on his wrist. The other end she wound through her own fingers so tightly they pulsed. She clung with her other hand to his upper arm. Tears rolled off her cheeks, but to reach for a tissue would mean letting go. She would walk with him as far as she could, holding onto him until the very end.

  32

  Willow held Prairie in her arms and stared out at the people gathered around Julian’s grave, a spattering of fifteen or twenty. She wanted to thank them for giving up their morning and curse those who hadn’t, thank them for their prayers and curse what they might be thinking—that Papa had been drunk and smoking.

  Prairie reached and touched the tears on Willow’s face, tiny round fingers exploring the wetness. “It’s all right,” Willow whispered in her ear, not imagining how it could ever be so again.

  Her gaze lifted above Papa’s casket and over the headstones of carved angels, crosses, and wide slabs flat as stone cellar doors. A week before, there had been ice, but the warm front that moved in almost immediately after remained, and the weather was spring-like. She wasn’t sure of the exact date, only that the calendar was somewhere in the first week of April. She looked to where the sky rolled, layer upon layer, the blue fading in the distance like unevenly-dyed silk.