by Andrew Hart
“Holy shit,” he said. “Did you see that?”
He couldn’t suppress a giddy thrill.
“Yeah,” said Anna, less certain in her enthusiasm.
“I’m going to have another go,” he said. “Or do you want to try?”
Anna shook her head, regarding the crossbow as if it were an unfriendly dog or, ironically, a coyote.
“Go on,” said Oaklynn. “Have a go.”
Anna hesitated, then sucked in a little breath and said, “OK.”
She handed Grace to Oaklynn, and Josh handed the bow to her. They watched as she put it end down and stepped into the stirrup as he had done, lacing the cocking rope into place and trying to pull it up vertically. She could move the taut green bowstring only a few inches, nowhere near enough to latch it in firing position. She abandoned the effort, blushing with exertion but not embarrassment.
“Never mind,” she said, handing it back to him.
“I’ll load it, and you can shoot it,” said Josh.
“No,” she said, certain now. “I don’t want to. You go ahead.”
She was glad when he took it from her, he could see from her face, the way she snatched her hands away from it as soon as the bow’s weight was in his hands. It revolted her just a little. That annoyed him because he was enjoying himself and didn’t want to feel bad about it, so he loaded and fired again, whooping as the arrow stuck in the rim of the circle they had drawn onto the target. He shot her a look then and knew she wanted to stop, wanted to get back in the house. She kept her hands clasped tight in front of her waist, and her eyes kept straying over the creek to the strip of woods on the far bank, as if a pack of wild animals was about to come spewing out, yapping and snarling.
“Here, Oaklynn,” he said, punishing Anna very slightly for spoiling the moment. “Why don’t you take a turn?”
She blushed in response and did that thing of hers where she looked down and sort of shrugged, as if she wanted to disappear, but then she held her big hands out to take it from him. Josh grinned as she took it, avoiding Anna’s eyes. He watched Oaklynn as she assessed the mechanism, her hands strong and efficient as she positioned it on the ground. She drew the cocking rope up to her chin with both hands, expanding through the shoulder and pinking in the face, shedding her matronly, lace-cuffed femininity, becoming bearlike with raw, unexpected power. Josh found the transformation a little unnerving, along with her private smile as the weapon latched, and she sighted through the scope, ready to fire.
Chapter Twenty-Five
ANNA
It was a true fall day, crisp and cool. The dogwood in the front was bronze, and the maples were the kind of true, hot red that always surprises, year after year, while one of the trees in Mary Beth’s yard was a pure golden yellow. Leaves were falling into drifts on the ground, and the sky was a clear and cloudless blue. It was the kind of day that made moving to Charlotte seem so obviously right, a bucolic escape from the gray rat race of New York. The girls wanted to be outside, but Veronica had grown obsessed with a playlist Oaklynn had made to her demands, so we had her iPod and a pair of tinny little speakers outside with us.
I should be working, I thought, but I couldn’t walk away.
I had been surprised by Oaklynn’s eclectic musical taste, partly because I was pretty out of touch myself since I listened to the radio so rarely. In college, I had been a real music fan, listening obsessively, learning all the lyrics, and regularly attending concerts. But something happened when I got married, and I found that I was listening only to what I already knew. After a while, new music sounded strange, not repellent but somehow not for me.
“The first mark of age,” said Josh shrewdly when I said so.
For all her Mormon background, though, Oaklynn’s tastes were more contemporary, and as I got used to them, I found myself liking what I heard. Veronica did, too, and as the time passed—Oaklynn had been with us about two months by now—the music became another bond between them that had me on the outside looking in. I didn’t resent that, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at all envious, and I kicked myself for not sharing my own musical past with my daughter more deliberately. I tried, playing her samples from my CD collection, but it all sounded dated compared to Oaklynn’s offerings.
So yes, maybe I did resent it a little.
But then I got to watch Veronica singing along, the words garbled but fresh in her mouth, as if she were making them up on the spot, singing out her very soul as if this and only this could speak to who she was to the world. How could I resent that?
She had a particular favorite, an Imagine Dragons song called “Demons,” which began quiet and reflective but rose to a rousing anthemic chorus. She loved it so much that it took several listens for me to notice the strangeness of her joy against the brooding overtones of trauma and despair in the words. Keep your distance, suggested the chorus. The singer had a darkness inside, and in that darkness were the demons of the title, shadows of past events, buried deep but never erased.
I glanced up, looking to share a knowing smile with Oaklynn, as Veronica belted out the words she couldn’t possibly understand, and was shocked to see Oaklynn looking distant and numb, her face pale, her eyes shining, as if looking through the music to something bleak and cold that only she could see. I stared, taken aback, and then the song ended, and she was Oaklynn again.
Grace turned one four days later. She was, of course, pretty much oblivious to the fact, but Veronica wanted to do something to mark the occasion and, if I was honest, so did I. It felt important, necessary, even if it was mostly just an opportunity to take photographs we would be able to look over as she grew older, more conscious of her past. I thought about that as I picked up a cake from Harris Teeter and some sparkly candles, reflecting on how quickly the time had passed since Veronica’s first birthday and how much she had changed. I chose a bunch of bright pink helium balloons with a swelling sense of panic and found myself driving too fast on the way home, as if afraid I would miss some landmark event in my baby’s life. By the time I got home, I was ridiculously misty-eyed at how fast the girls were growing up and had to fight off images of them as adults, married and living far away . . .
I lugged the bags of treats from the car, the balloons trailing and bobbing in the breeze, bumping against each other as I struggled to get through the door.
“’Loons!” exclaimed Veronica when she saw them, using one of the babyisms she wasn’t yet ready to give up.
“That’s right, Vronny,” I said in a stage whisper, setting a bag down so I could put a finger on her lips. “But be quiet. We don’t want to spoil the surprise for Gracie.”
“Gracie’s ’loons?” said Veronica, a little put out.
“For her birthday. But you can share.”
Veronica considered this, then grinned and nodded solemnly.
“Secret,” she said. “I’m good at secrets.”
“You are good at secrets,” I agreed, arranging my purchases on the kitchen counter.
“Like, Oaklynn’s cake,” she said, giving me a meaningful look.
I started to agree, then peered at her, perplexed.
“Oaklynn’s cake?” I repeated.
“For Gracie!” hissed Veronica as if it were obvious. “Her birthday cake.”
“I just bought . . . Did Miss Oaklynn already buy a birthday cake for Gracie?”
“Made,” said Veronica, very impressed. “She made a cake, and it’s glorious!”
That was the word she saved for very special things. Glorious.
I blinked.
“She made her a cake? Where is it?”
“In the fridge,” she replied as if this, too, should be obvious. “She was working on it all morning. It’s glorious.”
I wasn’t listening. I moved quickly to the fridge and opened it. There, on the lowest shelf, was a masterpiece of pink-and-white frosting with Happy Birthday, Grace! feathered across the top in fluid cursive lettering. It looked professional.
“Sh
e made this?”
Veronica nodded, but her previous beaming smile—half delight, half triumph at knowing about so wonderful a thing—had faltered, and she looked uncertain.
“Did Oaklynn not do right making the cake, Mommy?”
“No,” I said, feeling suddenly frustrated and stupid at the same time, knowing my cheeks were nearly as pink as the frosting. “I just wish she’d said something. Then I wouldn’t have bothered to . . . I mean, it’s just that . . .”
“You don’t think Gracie will like Miss Oaklynn’s cake?”
I stared at the thing in the fridge, then very deliberately closed the door, catching the way the interior light winked out just before the door sucked shut.
“No,” I said, turning and managing to smile. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”
And, of course, she did. So did Josh. The store-bought cake went largely unnoticed, and most of it had to be thrown away two days later. Forgetting the effects of the warmth and humidity of the South, I had left it out overnight and came down to find the cake spotted with black mold and with the beginnings of a gray-green fur on one side. I put the trash out quickly so that no one would notice, though I don’t know whom I was trying to protect. No one said anything about it until later that week when Veronica asked if there was cake, and I said there was none left and we shouldn’t have cake every day.
She slumped, crestfallen, into her chair and said as if to herself, “Mommy makes the most glorious cakes.”
I gave her a sharp look.
“Mommy does?” I said.
“I mean Oaklynn,” said Veronica guilelessly, with no sense that she had made a mistake. “My other mommy.”
For a moment, I stared at her with my mouth open, speechless. Then I took a plate quickly to the sink and held it under the faucet while the water ran for almost a minute until I was ready to go back to the table.
Josh had a drinks meeting. In the old days, that had meant strip clubs for the all-male out-of-towners—with some minimal show of reluctance from the Charlotte boys—but I was assured that the so-called banking culture had evolved at last. Now, drinks meetings were as likely to take place at one of the city’s up-and-coming craft breweries. I still didn’t get invited, and Josh would blunder in late, stinking of beer and having to keep getting up to pee. I had long since stopped waiting up for him to arrive, bleary and exhausted if not actually drunk.
I was lying awake in bed, trying not to think about Veronica’s earlier remark—my other mommy—focusing instead on how to build a fledgling client list, feeling that same mixture of happy anticipation and guilty dread that had so characterized my life of late, when I suddenly froze. I had heard something, something that had seemed to come from mere inches above my head. I lay still, eyes wide in the gloom, listening hard.
It came again, a sharp scratching noise—small but seeming to reverberate through the room. I sat up, rigid, and for a second, nothing happened. Then it came again, a scraping, gnawing sound.
Mr. Quietly?
Oaklynn kept him in the basement with her at night. Even without the coyotes beyond the creek and Tammy’s damn terrier running free, she hadn’t wanted the cat to be out after dark.
Sitting up had changed my sense of the sound. It seemed to be coming less from the wall behind the bed and more from the ceiling above me. I pressed my ear to the wall nevertheless and felt rather than heard the rumble of the sound again, accompanied this time by the whisper of animal feet.
Too big for a mouse, surely.
The bed felt huge, vacant without Josh. I got up silently, folding back the covers, and treading lightly over the carpet to the hall door. I opened it, muffling the snap of the latch as best I could and snapped on the light, flooding the upper hall and the foyer downstairs with a hard radiance that made me feel conspicuous, vulnerable. There was no sign of Mr. Quietly scratching at the wall, and I hadn’t really expected there to be. I briefly considered the ceiling hatch up to the attic but dismissed the idea. The flooring up there was incomplete, and even with a flashlight, I didn’t trust myself to not put a foot wrong and come crashing through the ceiling.
That was another of those little dodges, like when Veronica had pretended she had come in from the garden because of the cold rather than the possibility of snakes down by the creek. I didn’t want to go up there in the dark by myself, and I certainly didn’t want to come face-to-face with whatever was scurrying around above the bedroom. It wouldn’t be anything dangerous. That wasn’t the issue. I wasn’t sure what the issue was, but I felt revolted by the idea of an animal in the house, gnawing on the wallboard, pissing on the rafters. What if it was a rat that had gotten inside via a drainpipe? I’d heard of such things in New York. What if it burrowed through the Sheetrock and dropped down from the ceiling onto our bed in the middle of the night? Or onto the girls . . .
Jesus. The thought of its matted fur and beady eyes, its twining, fibrous tail and hard little claws skittering across my sleeping face . . .
I moved quickly along the hall to Veronica’s room, opened the door—still listening for the sound of movement in the walls—and peered inside. She was sleeping soundly with Lamby and other assorted toys, softly lit by the Winnie-the-Pooh night-light under the window. Her face, so often clouded with thought when she was awake, looked clear, open, like a cherub in a painting, so that for a moment, I forgot the animal in the attic and stood staring at her.
At last, I closed the door and went across the hall to Grace’s room, thinking that I could change her and make sure her fever had gone. I tried the door with the same caution and stepped into its baby-scented sweetness. My eyes went straight to the crib, registering something strange, and as my steps grew longer, less careful, I felt the shrill note of panic rising in my throat.
And then I saw the rocker, where Oaklynn sat, shrouded in blankets, a dark, shapeless mound cradling Grace, who was sound asleep. She seemed malevolent, toad-like in the gloom, and for a split second I wanted to scream at her, demand who she was and what she was doing in my house.
A demon in the dark.
I managed a kind of control but couldn’t keep back the confused indignation that was the tail end of my momentary terror.
“What are you doing up here?” I demanded.
“Wanted to make sure she was OK,” whispered Oaklynn. “Hope you don’t mind. She’s so sweet when she’s asleep. Heck, she’s sweet all the time. Kind of recharges my batteries, you know?”
She sounded like her old self, smiling, nurturing, and as my eyes adjusted to the light and I made sense of her shape, the malevolence I had imagined melted away. I felt stupid, neurotic. Still, I couldn’t just leave. Grace was mine, after all.
My other mommy . . .
“Why don’t you go to bed?” I managed. “I’ll sit with her.”
There was a fractional, unreadable silence. Then Oaklynn said simply, “Sure.”
“You didn’t hear anything, did you? In the ceiling? Like, an animal, maybe?”
“No,” she replied, handing Grace to me, using the crook of her arm to make sure her head didn’t loll too much. “I checked her temperature and her diapers. Everything seems normal.”
“Right,” I said, mad at myself for not asking. I had been thinking about it. I just hadn’t said it. “Great. Hopefully it—whatever it was—is over. And buy some mousetraps next time you’re at the store, will you? I don’t want things nesting up there for the winter and then chewing through the wiring or something.”
“We could try mothballs,” said Oaklynn. “Place a few in the attic. The smell is supposed to ward off rodents.”
She gave me a bland smile.
“OK,” I said, keeping my voice low so as not to wake Grace. “You are a treasury of good ideas.”
I meant it sincerely, but I was tired and still a little rattled by finding her there, so it sounded just a little drier than I had meant it, as if I were being patronizing or even sarcastic.
She was out of the chair and making for the d
oor, but for a moment, she froze in the act, stopping only inches away. In the low light, I had the impression that her eyes were narrow and her face was set. For a second, neither of us moved, and I held my breath, holding Grace close in a way that was instinctively protective. I was suddenly acutely aware of how large Oaklynn was, how strong, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. I pulled back a fraction, but Oaklynn did not move. I could smell the soapy aroma of her hair, feel the warmth of her breath. And then she was moving again.
“Night,” she said.
She made it to the door before I could whisper “Night” in return, the word sticking in my throat. When she stepped out and closed the door softly behind her, I stayed where I was for a long moment, conscious that my heart was racing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Anna was in bed when Josh got home, which was as he had expected. She was awake, though. Maybe, he thought, this is as good a time as any. It felt easier in the dark.
“Sorry to be late,” he said, fumbling his suit jacket onto a hanger.
“It’s OK. I knew you would be.”
She didn’t sound sleepy. He hesitated, sitting on the foot of the bed and pulling his socks off.
“How are the girls?”
“Fine,” said Anna, though her voice sounded a little stiff. “Grace is more herself, and Veronica is still talking about Oaklynn’s cake.”
“Great.”
“I guess.”
He hesitated and regrouped, knowing he’d missed something but not sure what.
“You knew I had to be out tonight,” said Josh. “I told you last week.”
“It’s fine,” said Anna.
“You don’t really sound—”
“Really, Josh, it’s OK.”
She still sounded a little clipped, and he frowned into the gloom, knowing that his irritation was at least partly guilt. He considered getting into bed and saying nothing more, but he had to say it. It wasn’t like he would be risking a tender moment.