Luna’s face was expressionless, like a Halloween mask. She said, “The jar is right in the fridge in front. I put plastic wrap over the top and then the cap. He only ate half of his chicken noodle and half of his applesauce.”
A moment later, Carla Quinn came through the swinging doors.
“Campbell,” she said. “Owen sick again?”
“Yes, he is, Carla. How did you know?”
“Oh, you know,” Big Carla said, “heard it through the grapevine. My neighbor works overnights. She called and told me.”
“It’s seven o’clock on a Sunday morning!” Campbell exclaimed.
Meredith stared, shocked silent. It was the invasion of the babysitters.
“News travels fast. Anyhow, if he’s being admitted, you won’t need me tomorrow right? Or will you?” Carla asked.
Campbell shook her head. “Carla, why did you come all the way in here to ask me that? Why didn’t you just call? Call me at the desk? You’re not on the schedule today are you?”
Carla shrugged. Today, she was dressed up in a Seven-Up green pantsuit over her black men’s rubber buckle boots. “It’s on the way to church.”
“What church?” In Ridgeline, the Catholic Church that the Brynns attended, St. Thomas More, was on Church Street, as were the Methodist, Unitarian, and Congregational churches. Church Street was about as opposite from the hospital as someone could get. “I’m sorry for how that sounded,” Campbell said. “I just ... I’m stressed and it seemed strange.”
“That’s okay. We do a basement thing, in someone’s rec room. I’m old Catholic,” Carla said. “You know, we still have the mass in Latin and all? It’s out in Deptford by the quarry. The priest—well, he used to be a priest—thought the church is too modern for him now. I started going after my husband and Ellie died. I feel closer to them there.” Carla stepped forward and hugged one of Campbell’s shoulders with her big hand. “We’ll pray for him. I’ll start a prayer chain. Poor baby. Not much older than Ellie. How much more can he take without giving up?” There were suddenly tears on Carla’s big cheeks. She pulled out a man’s oversized handkerchief. “I just hope he doesn’t give up.” Carla turned and clomped out toward the parking lot.
“I know Carla’s husband died in a car accident,” Campbell said. “Who’s Ellie?” Campbell turned to Luna. “I’m grateful to you Luna for helping Owen. Please forgive us if we’re over-reacting. He’s just a little baby. And this has all happened so fast.” Luna shrugged but finally nodded and slipped into her own coat. She refused the offer of a ride home.
“She’s a witch,” Merry said. “Maybe she has a broomstick.”
“Merry, this is bad enough,” Campbell said briefly.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Merry said. “I just can’t bear how sad this is.” Holding back tears, she hugged her mother. “Should I go home, Mom?”
“Go ahead. Dad needs to get those baby food jars anyhow, honey. I’ll be in touch every minute, if anything happens. Adam has homework. He was up at 2 a.m., and I hope Mally got him to go back to sleep.”
Merry didn’t say a word on the way home; nor did her father. He didn’t flip on the exasperating talk radio that seemed to be an extension of his right hand, either. Merry texted all her friends, who were eager to know the details of Owen’s latest illness. For Allie and Erika and Neely and especially Kimmy—whose own younger brother, adopted from Vietnam, was only three—Owen was like a special little mascot. He had his own Ridgeline Rockets vest that he wore to games and competitions, sewn for him by Kim’s mom, Bonnie, and his own pom poms. Every time they saw him, they made him wiggle his rear end and say, “So fine!”
When they got to the house, Tim simply put the two jars in a plastic ziplock bag and kissed Merry briefly on the head. Then he left without a word.
Meredith shivered. The house seemed to be freezing. Either Adam was up in his room on the ancient computer his parents had passed on to him or had gone back to sleep. Plainly, Meredith could see her sister passed out on the sofa, so deeply asleep she had obviously not even heard Tim and Merry come in. She was slipping one of the two thousand afghans Grandma had knitted for them over Mally’s shoulders and checking the thermostat—it wasn’t cold; only the usual freezer temp that Tim and Campbell said was good for a person, sixty-seven degrees—when she heard a knock at the door.
Dad had forgotten something. And the car was already running with his keys in it.
But when she got to the door and pulled back the curtains, there, in the gauzy sunshine stood Ben.
THOUGH HELL SHOULD WHICH BAR THE WAY
Merry forgot to breathe.
Ben had just lit a cigarette and was about to walk back down the steps when Meredith finally gathered enough presence of mind to open the door. She despised smoking. But for some reason, the cigarettes had no odor. And when she sat down next to Ben, he didn’t have that rank, sickening smell.
“Hey,” Ben said. “I missed you.”
“Me too,” said Merry.
Why do I feel so comfortable with a stranger?
“I feel like I’ve known you all my life,” Ben said. “Is that strange?”
“If it is, I’m strange, too,” Merry said.
Ben moved closer to her, so they were almost touching. Meredith felt a longing that spread up from her tummy, a combination of every fever she ever had in her childhood. Around Ben there seemed to be a kind of light. His seawater eyes were filled with nothing but Meredith and the longing she could tell he felt for her. Her concern for her little brothers—the one in the hospital and the one she assumed was upstairs asleep—was like a distant siren, alarming but far away, having to do with someone else. She only wanted to be with Ben, kissing Ben. She wanted to touch the muscles in Ben’s back and his chest and the curve of his lips. Although it was cold, somehow Meredith didn’t feel it, even though she wore nothing but sweats with the sleeves cut short. When she finally remembered to breathe, her gasps made clouds of smoke in the cold air. It was as though the two of them were enclosed in a bubble of light and heat.
“I was going to come to find you,” she said.
“But I knew where you live,” Ben said. To Merry’s bemusement, he actually looked surprised. “This is the Brynns’ house. You ... you always lived here. Kevin and Tim and Karin and everyone ...”
“Well, that was a long time ago. Those people are way older than we are, Ben, so ...”
As though to turn her away from the subject, Ben said, “I wish I could kiss you. I want to. It’s ... I know it’s too soon.” Then he said, “Let lips do what hands do ... like it says in your favorite play.”
“It’s hardly my favorite. But I’m liking it more these days. I kind of see the point of Romeo and Juliet,” Merry said, holding her small palm up so that what she and Ben felt vibrated between them. “I don’t mind if you kiss me,” she added. “In fact, I really want that, more than I ever have with anyone. I can’t believe I said that. But my little brother is in the hospital. I don’t know why that matters. I’d just hate to be enjoying myself when he’s sick, and I’d hate to be worrying about him the first time I kissed you.” Ben’s eyes melted with pity. “And my other little brother is upstairs scared out of his gourd.”
“I thought you had a little sister.”
“I have a twin sister,” Meredith said. “Mallory is an identical twin to me. We have two little brothers.”
“I didn’t remember that,” Ben said. What could he mean, Mally thought? Ben seemed to think he was talking about another family. Well, they had just met.
“So I have to go in,” Merry finally said. “My little brother might want me. My sister’s asleep. She was up all night.”
Immediately, Ben sat up and smiled. “That’s fine. I don’t want your parents to think I’m corrupting you.” He held out his cigarette. “Pretty disgusting.” Meredith laughed.
“You are corrupting me. I’m not used to feeling like ... this.”
“You’ve never been in love?”
Love, Meredith thought. LOVE?
“Ben, I just met you! Love is something that grows.”
“How do you know, if you’ve never been in love?” he asked. “But who am I to talk? I’ve never been in love, either.” Meredith sat up and crossed her legs under her suddenly freezing butt. She’d been sitting on cold concrete, and it would take her hours to feel her rear end.
“I have no idea. But that’s what they say. It takes time,” Meredith told Ben. “I always thought it would be sudden, for me. But people tell me that’s just attraction. It’s not real. It doesn’t last.”
“Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?” Ben recited.
“How did you know that? And why did you say that? I said that the first time I saw you, through the bus window. We’re studying Romeo and Juliet at school.”
“My mom made us memorize and recite.”
“We have to do that, too. It’s good for you I guess. Trains the brain. But I can’t see how I can memorize a long poem and then say it in front of people. I picked a short one.”
Ben leaned back on his elbows. He asked, “What poem did you choose?”
“‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost. ‘And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.’ It’s like saying a dream.”
“Because it’s easy,” Ben teased her.
“Because I love it. What about you, smart guy?”
“Watch for me by moonlight. Wait for me by moonlight. I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
“What is that?”
“Look it up,” said Ben, pulling up the collar on his leather jacket with one finger and bending down to kiss Merry’s nose. He didn’t touch her, but again, she felt that glow, that strange, golden sense of being claimed and loved. The awkward, stiff-lipped, eighth-grade kisses from Will and Dane were nothing like this. Without laying a hand on her, Ben made her feel like a woman, a woman in blossom. “Will you be safe here? Do you want me to sit outside and watch out for you?”
She sighed and said, “No. I’m fine. Thanks, though. I’ll see you later.”
“You can bet on it,” Ben said, sprinting down the steps. “I’ve got your glove. I found it on the porch! You must have dropped it coming in.”
“Give that back,” Merry said, half teasing.
“It smells like you,” he said and took off down the street at a jog.
Meredith had to get inside and think.
As she stood, she was suddenly dizzy and her last thought was, No ... no, what was this?
The land was like a park, but surrounded by twisting, broad-leafed, unfamiliar trees, hung with vines. The grass was worn away, but beautiful birds bounced on the branches of the trees. Wearing a helmet, his face smeared with grease and streaked with sweat, Ben was saying, “Come on, buddy. Just a few more feet. Just a few more feet. ” All around him in the dust, something struck like hail, sending up showers of dirt. “Come on,” Ben said, throwing himself down on his face and covering the back of his head with his hands. It was a game, a sport of some kind. There was a goal everyone was headed for. Everyone needed a helmet. Everyone was filthy. The ground was wet and slick. And Ben looked frightened—frightened and terribly sad.
“Merry, are you coming in?” Adam said. “Are you okay, ’Ster?”—a word he used only when he was feeling especially tender or shaky. Merry guessed that he felt both.
“I’m fine, Adam Ant. I just was out here trying to get some air. I’m learning to ... um ... meditate. So I don’t talk so much.”
“Well, you looked like you got the hang of the trance thing. And you got a lot of it. Air. I could hear you talking to someone under my window.” Adam liked his room cold and always kept his window cracked open. Campbell went in and closed it before she went to bed, but she wasn’t at home. Merry hadn’t figured on him opening his window and eavesdropping.
“I don’t really like being alone in the house right now,” Adam said. For a twelve-year-old guy, this was a huge admission. Merry thought he really must have been scared.
“It’s morning!” she said. “We’re both here.”
“Mallory’s asleep like a dead person. And it’s a creepy time of year.”
“Winter?” Meredith said, incredulous. Adam loved winter—skiing, Christmas, snow days.
“When we were alone here last night, I heard things outside,” Adam told his sister. “Okay? It creeps me out. I could hear ... possums and bats and junk. And voices. After Luna left. Creepy voices.”
“And bison, I bet,” Meredith said, teasing. She prayed, Don’t let him be like Mallory and me.
“Go ahead and laugh, Meredith. You’re so never scared of anything. Like, just waking up screaming in the middle of the night.”
“Once in my life,” Merry said, referring to a dream she’d had the previous year.
“Merry, I’m so sorry, but that’s crazy,” Adam said angrily. “I’m not one of your stupid friends who think you two look oh-so-much alike that you’re the same person. I heard both of you screaming a bunch of times. Mally, too. Like scream in your sleep the way you do in a nightmare. And you were just out there talking to yourself.”
“I was repeating a poem,” Merry said. “Med-i-ta-tion. It’s peaceful.”
“You’re about as peaceful as a fire in a fireworks factory!”
“Let’s go look it up. It’s for school.” Merry had to distract him.
She stood on Adam’s knee to pull down Tim’s dusty volume of Treasures of British and American Poetry. She didn’t find the line Ben had repeated. Merry went to the computer and typed in, “Though hell should bar the way.” Immediately, this poem, pages long, sprang up.
“This old poem, Ant. Listen. There are Web sites for it. People are just crazy about it. There are about a bazillion mentions,” said Merry.
“Fascinating,” said Adam.
“Listen,” Merry said. She read to Adam about the poem. It was old, as old as ... crazy old, like from before the turn of the century. And not 2001. It was about a girl watching out the window, waiting for her sweetheart, the highwayman. Her name was Bess, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, who tied a dark-red ribbon into her long black hair. After a brief visit and a single kiss, the highwayman set out to rob someone. Bess was captured by British soldiers who took over her father’s ... uh, hotel. They wanted to shoot her boyfriend, who, while being a highway robber, was evidently a good person in other ways, rather like Robin Hood. At least, Bess seemed to think so. The soldiers got drunk and tied Bess to a bed, with a gun under her stomach, so that she couldn’t move. It grew dark, closer to night. Only she knew that her lover was coming up the road.
She heard the hoofbeats.
The soldiers heard the hoofbeats.
Then, Bess moved her finger and pulled the trigger. Excited, Merry read the poem aloud to Adam.
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
“Can we watch TV? Can we go shovel the walk?” Adam whined.
“It didn’t snow,” Merry told him.
“I know but I can’t take anymore of this poem.”
“Adam! Listen, this is the good part.” She told her brother about how the highwayman found out about Bess and turned back. The British soldiers shot him down in the highway, “down like a dog” in the road, where he lay in his own blood.
Meredith began to cry. She could see Adam watching her curiously but couldn’t stop. The old poem, to him, must have seemed boring or creepy. It was the most beautiful thing that Merry had ever read. And when she got to the end, she thought she might cry herself sick.
“This is the end,” she told Adam. “Just a few more lin
es.”
“It better be,” he said.
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
“What’s that all about?” Adam asked. “What’s a love-knot?”
“I don’t know,” Merry said, gulping. “I think it’s like a French braid.”
“What’s a French braid?”
“Nothing. Adam. It’s about love outlasting death. They’re ghosts. Did you get that? She shot herself to warn him but he was still shot down.”
“That’s terrific. Kind of a happy ending thing,” Adam said with a sneer. He turned on the sports channel, standing on tiptoe to point the remote over Meredith’s head.
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