The Sky Beneath My Feet, page 14
Sure enough, the sash window stands open. I get there and lean outside just in time to see Sam shimmy to the ground and disappear behind the corner of the house.
“She’s going round back. Come on!”
“Mom,” he says. “Who’s this Sam?”
No time for explanations. I call down to Gregory, then run into him at the foot of the stairs. Holly and Rick look on in astonishment.
“She’s getting away,” I exclaim, feeling ridiculous.
We pour out into the backyard, looking for signs of the escaping girl.
From the far side of the stone wall, Deedee calls out, “She went in there.”
I follow her pointing finger to the now-closed door of Rick’s shed. Of course. I head for the door, but Rick grabs my arm.
“Let me.”
The first time he’s touched me since the night the Shaws came.
I stop in my tracks, letting him go ahead. He puts his hand on the doorknob, pauses to collect himself, then pushes through. The door closes behind him.
The rest of us gather in a crowd, watching and waiting. Deedee and Roy come and rejoin us.
“What do you think’s going on in there?” Gregory asks.
Jed leans toward me. “Who’s the girl, anyway?”
“It’s a junkie your mom brought home,” Holly says, which earns her a caustic look from Gregory.
“Home to live?” Jed asks.
Deedee laughs out loud. “This place is getting more and more interesting!”
A minute passes. The others lapse into conversation. I try to tune out the nervous chatter. I can’t even hear myself think. After five minutes, they fall silent again.
“It’s been a long time,” Roy says.
“You think he’s all right in there?”
Gregory sniffs. “You think he is?”
The door opens. We wait to see who will appear.
Sam emerges into the light. She blinks at the sky, her arms tightly coiled around her body like she’s cold. She takes a step toward us, recognizing Gregory.
“I want to go home,” she says.
“Are you all right?”
“I want to go home.”
“First thing in the morning,” he begins.
“Not in the morning. Now. I want to go now.”
“But—”
“You heard her,” I tell him.
Sam walks through our little crowd, which parts to let her pass. Gregory follows her. “I guess we’re leaving?”
“Call me when you get there, no matter how late.”
When he’s gone, I turn back toward the shed. The door is closed.
“I guess that’s that,” Holly says.
“The good thing is, she’s going home. When I tried to convince her before, she didn’t want to go.”
Jed shakes his head, still trying to process everything. “I wonder what Dad said to her.”
“I guess we won’t get a chance to ask.”
“So,” Deedee says. “Let me get this straight. You couldn’t get her to go home. She wanted to stay in some crack house downtown? And she talks to Rick for five minutes and he turns her completely around?”
“It’s not a crack house—”
But she isn’t listening. “His first miracle,” she says to Roy. “And this is only the first week. Wait and see, I tell you. Wait and see.”
They head back to the big house.
“Now, she’s a hoot,” Holly says. “‘His first miracle.’ And can you believe that painting? Are you going to hang it up over your bed?”
I see her lips moving, but I don’t hear what she says. There’s a high-pitched noise in my ear, a wiry tremolo. And like Rick looking around the kitchen to make sure he wasn’t the only one who could see the painting, I glance at Jed and Holly, amazed that they can’t hear the sound.
It’s like Kathie Shaw’s tinnitus, canceling out every other sound. A throbbing whine you were never meant to hear but cannot ignore.
chapter 10
A Night Visitor
Every morning a clump of fresh flowers lies at Rick’s threshold, partly obscured under the falling leaves. I’m not sure where Deedee’s picking them. Maybe she drops in on the florist each afternoon during her break from painting. Since the birthday party, we don’t see her as much. According to Roy, she spends most of her time working on the mural.
“It’s extraordinary the way she goes at it,” he tells me. “The priest had the bishop over for a look, and he seemed almost jealous that she wasn’t doing her mural for the cathedral. You really should go by and see it.”
But I haven’t visited the parish church. Why should I? I get an eyeful every time I climb the stairs. Without even asking permission, Eli drove a nail dead center in the upstairs landing and hung Deedee’s portrait of his sainted father. Hauling clean laundry upstairs, I keep imagining myself tripping and falling backward. Landing at the foot of the stairs, my legs twisted at odd angles, the painted Rick staring down at me, thinking, Serves you right.
Days have passed and I still haven’t confronted Eli about the marijuana. I make a point of sniffing him when he comes home. So far, nothing. Maybe Gregory got it wrong? I don’t think so. More likely, Eli knows his uncle recognized the smell. He’s taking more precautions now. This could be all in my head, but I imagine him on his guard around me, waiting for the moment I bring the subject up, ready with counterarguments.
So I’m biding my time, hoping to catch him off guard.
While cooking or doing dishes, washing and folding clothes, I remember the flat expression on Sam’s face when she emerged from the shed. Resignation, I guess. What did Rick say to her? I imagine him giving some kind of Scared Straight speech, taking advantage of her disorientation. If life at Mission Up wasn’t enough to scare her straight, though, how could Rick manage the job? Try as I might, I can’t visualize that scene.
I’ve called Gregory several times to check on the girl’s progress back home. After the joyous, tearful reunion—most of the emotion coming from her mother—Greg managed to get her into a drug counseling program. But she’s depressed, he says, rarely leaving the house. She hasn’t returned to class and probably won’t anytime soon. I suppose Rick’s miracle only went so far. From the description, it sounds like Sam is anything but healed.
“Is that how you want to end up?” In my imagination, I confront Eli with the question. And in my imagination, he breaks down and renounces pot in perpetuity.
I keep the key to Stacy’s beach house on my nightstand. I’m still sleeping on my side of the bed. If I’m careful, I can turn the covers back and get a good night’s sleep without disturbing the tucked-in side where my husband used to sleep.
“You can’t drop out,” Holly says. “You can’t put your whole life on hold.”
The phone feels warm in my hand, we’ve been talking so long. Talking in circles, rehashing the same themes.
“How am I dropping out?”
“What about last night? You missed the makeup party.”
“That was last night?” Another one of the church ladies selling cosmetics on the side. The printed invitation is pinned to the fridge with magnets, half covered by another invitation to a party about cooking utensils.
“You’re supposed to be my wingman at these things.”
“Your wing-person,” I say. “And I thought you were my wing-person.”
“Ha, ha. It was funny the first ten times you said it. The point is, you’re bailing on things. People notice stuff like that.”
“I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
“Yeah, but everybody knows by now that you’re not. The boys are still showing up to school every day. People see you at the grocery store.”
“Can’t I take a break? Look at Rick. Nobody’s giving him a hard time.”
Which isn’t exactly true. I keep taking messages from Jim Shaw, who doesn’t understand why Rick never returns his calls. I leave Post-its on the bathroom mirror every morning, reminding Rick that Jim’s waiting. I even go to Starbucks every morning for an hour, sipping coffee I could have made for myself at home, giving my husband time to sneak into the house, use the bathroom, and (hopefully) take a shower. He never leaves any notes in reply, even though I placed the stack of Post-its on the back of the toilet with a pen on top.
“Just don’t forget about tonight,” Holly says.
“What’s tonight?”
“It’s the book club, Beth!”
“The book club, right. Which book is it again?”
“You’re killing me, you know that? Let’s meet for lunch.”
“I have plans for lunch.”
“Really? What plans?”
“Plans,” I say. “I have to go to Barnes and Noble, for one thing.”
“To get the book.” Her frustration escapes in a loud sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Beth. I really don’t.”
Ninety minutes later, alone in the Barnes and Noble café between a neurotic-looking man doing what looks like grad school math homework and a table full of young mothers rolling strollers back and forth with one hand and holding caramel Frappucinos in the other, I sit staring at the back cover of tonight’s book.
The two groups I belong to couldn’t be more different. One of them, which Holly calls the Smart Girls, is mostly professional women, trying to keep up with all the books everybody is talking about . . . everyone who listens to public radio, at any rate. Despite the group’s unofficial name, hanging with these overachieving ladies, I feel anything but smart.
The second group, the one meeting tonight, Holly calls the Bodice Rippers. The nickname isn’t entirely fair. Yes, there are plenty of bodices in the books these ladies choose, along with corsets, bustles, and bonnets, but rarely does any of that dainty lace get ripped. Instead, the invariably strong-willed heroines keep their Brinks-level chastity belts locked tight. They find God and they get their man.
The Bodice Rippers read to escape, and the Smart Girls read to keep up. Holly reads to have a good-natured laugh at them both (though she enjoys the books on both sides immensely, whatever she may pretend to the contrary). And me? I guess I show up just to help. I’m always afraid that the night I don’t show up, nobody else will come either. I hate to leave the organizers in the lurch.
If there’s one thing I hate more than that, though, it’s having to keep the two groups separated. The ladies are all from The Community. Most are at least acquainted with each other. But they run in different circles and turn their noses up at what the other group is reading. The Smart Girls pump me for ridiculous details about what the Bodice Rippers are reading, while the Bodice Rippers try to get me to agree that the Smart Girls only read so people will keep thinking they’re smart.
At least with Pampered Chef, all you have to do is show up! There’s not a three-hundred-page cover charge to gain admission.
The moms at the next table leaf through magazines and drop the first names of a bunch of celebrities as if they’re people the women know. Whenever one of their phones pings with a new text message, the conversation lulls, but they talk straight through any noise that the various babies make. When the moms laugh too loudly, the math nerd on the other side of me gives them a stern look. Not that they notice.
“I can’t hear myself think,” he mutters, snapping his textbook shut.
But he doesn’t leave. He digs through the satchel between his feet and finds a set of earphones. Soon he’s cocooned in a buffer of preemptive sound, still looking perturbed.
On the front cover of my book, a nondescript beauty in black mourning holds a small bouquet of blood-red flowers. Over her shoulder, a rakish hero stands with his back to her, twisting his head around to give a view of his nondescriptly handsome face. They look like models in costumes, not historical people. I’m going to buy the book, but this cover irritates me.
Confession: I don’t actually want everybody to be beautiful, not in that unlined, creaseless, symmetrical way. Android beauty, like it comes out of a test tube. Beauty without blemish or mark. Not only do I not identify with such people, I don’t believe in them either. I don’t even find them attractive. This is what makes watching television so hard: they don’t cast actors anymore, only models. When they make the movie of my life, they’d better cast a character actor in the lead.
Don’t try to tell me I’m not a character.
I have a balance on one of my gift cards, which takes the sting out of buying the book. Instead of retreating to the house, I drive around for a while and end up at Panera, where I hold down a table for the rest of the afternoon, flipping pages as fast as I can.
In the end, I lose my nerve. The thought of making an appearance in front of the Bodice Rippers is too much for me. They’ll ask about Rick. If Stacy’s there, she’ll want to know why I’m still not in Florida. There will be too much explaining to do.
And then they’ll ask me what I thought about the novel.
At home, I hole up in my bedroom. Eli comes and goes, followed by Jed. At dusk, Holly starts calling. Probably to offer me a ride. After the third or fourth attempt, I switch off my phone.
“You’re being stupid,” I tell myself.
Snatching up the novel, I head downstairs, fully intending to go to the book club. What did I skim the novel for, if I’m not going to go? But I leave the book on the kitchen counter, pretending I’ll pick it up on the way out, knowing I’m not going anywhere. Night falls and I curl up in an armchair, letting the clock tick down.
A funny thing about me: when I skip out, I also hide out. I don’t cut one event to enjoy another. Instead I hunker down at home where no one can observe me playing hooky. “You might as well have gone,” Rick will say, not understanding. Once the start time has passed and there’s no chance of making it to the book club in time, I breathe a sigh of relief.
A knock at the door.
Jed and Eli don’t knock, of course. They come and go as they please. So it must be Holly, driving over in person to call my bluff. Well, I won’t give her the satisfaction.
Only it doesn’t sound like Holly’s knock. For one thing, Holly would pound on the door. “I know you’re in there. Your car is in the driveway. Come on out before I come in and get you!” This knock is tentative, and there’s no follow-up. A knock that’s done its duty and is ready to give up.
Overwhelmed with curiosity, I go to the front window and ease one of the blinds up for a peek. The porch light is turned off. Whoever’s at the door is standing too close for me to get a good look. But I can see the back of her profile—it’s a woman, but not Holly. This one is smaller, thinner, with a wild explosion of hair. Goose bumps raise on my forearm. I think it’s Sam.
I rush to the door. Before opening, I take a deep breath.
“Oh,” I say. “Hi.”
“If this is too weird, me turning up like this, just say something and I’ll take off.”
It’s not Sam. It’s Marlene. The dreadlocked girl from the Rent-a-Mob meeting. The one who used to be in Jed’s youth group, who made such an impression on him. He’ll be sorry he wasn’t here.
“Come in, come in,” I say, urging her inside. I reach for the wall switch, bathing the porch in warm, gold light.
This is perfect. If Holly complains about my nonattendance, I can tell her an unexpected visitor turned up.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this. I would’ve called, but I don’t know your number.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. I turned off my phone.”
“What happened the other day, it didn’t feel right. It’s kind of been chewing at me ever since. I still know some people from the church, so I asked how to get in touch. One of my friends told me you lived next door to that wonderful house. I’ve always loved that place.”
“It is wonderful. The people who live there are wonderful too.”
She nods. “I know Deedee Smythe—I mean, I know of her. I know her work.”
Marlene’s dreads are loose and free, and she wears an ankle-length tank dress, an old-lady sweater, and sandals, with an oversized fringed bag slung across her chest. She declines coffee and soda but perks up at the mention of tea, eventually choosing Darjeeling from the box of packets I hold out for inspection. Milk and no sugar. While I boil water, she looks around the kitchen, peering down hallways and up the stairs, her hands clutching the strap of her bag.
“I know it’s strange to just turn up out of the blue—”
“Stop apologizing, Marlene. I’m happy to see you. If you look up those stairs, you can see an example of Deedee’s recent work. She’s painting a mural at the Catholic church just up the hill.” I wait until she’s had a few moments to inspect the picture. “You recognize who it is?”
“Oh,” she says. “How funny.”
“I’m not sure who he’s meant to be. Not Judas, anyway, or he wouldn’t get a halo, right?”
“Probably not. To be honest, I didn’t realize she was still painting. The way people talked about her when I was growing up, I assumed she was retired.”
“You grew up around here, then?”
She nods. “Over toward Loch Raven, on Chapelwood.”
“Wow,” I say. “Nice.”
“They sold the house after the divorce, but I still drive by sometimes. It’s strange to think of other people living there. But this place is really great. Did it used to be part of the big house?”
“Everything around here was. There’s another carriage house kind of thing, and some outbuildings. The family has sold off bits and pieces over time. Deedee and her mother are the last of the line, I guess, and after Margaret’s gone, Deedee threatens to move to California.”
“I could never do that,” she says. “No seasons.”
“I know, right. This is my favorite time of year.”
When the tea is brewed, Marlene clutches her mug in two hands, inhaling the steam. She’s such a cute girl, really. If she’d take some of the metal out of her face, get rid of those awful dreads . . .
She notices the book on the counter for the first time. Sets her mug down to pick it up. As she flips the pages absently, I wither inside. Embarrassed.
