Little Night, page 9
“Do you really want me to get butter all over your papers?” she’d asked.
“Yeah, try it, and you’ll see what happens.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll steal your passport so you can’t go with me,” he’d said with a teasing smile. She grinned, because he was picking up on her latest thing—echoing their mother, saying that she and Gilly should grab their passports and take off.
“Where are you going to go?” she’d asked.
“Rio de Janeiro,” he’d said. “To meet a hot girl. You’d just get in the way.”
“No, you’d need me. You’re too shy to talk to anyone—I’d help you.”
“Yeah, well, if you get pie crust on my report, I’m hiding your passport, so you won’t be going anywhere.”
“I’ll find it,” she’d said. “No one in this house hides anything from me for long. And besides, you’re not leaving without me.”
“We’ll see,” he’d said, laughing again. He brushed long dark hair back from his big brown eyes, still smiling. Grit loved her brother so much; she wanted him to look this happy all the time. They’d stared for another minute, and then he’d gone back to writing his report, drawing all kinds of graphs about the earth’s temperature.
Sitting between Clare and Sarah now, she imagined Gilly taking his passport, leaving their house, and disappearing from their family. She didn’t want to open her eyes, see the room’s gray-blue shadows. She’d rather picture him in the sun on a white beach by the edge of the sea, arms around the most beautiful girl in Rio de Janeiro, Sugarloaf Mountain rising behind them.
*
Paul was off-duty, but he patrolled the park as if it were still his shift. Temperatures kept dropping, and the path that led north from West 103rd Street felt frozen beneath his feet. He held a receiver with a green light that blinked rapidly, the closer he got to his quarry. The program was controversial, but a few years back, several eastern screech owls, rehabbed from injuries, had been introduced into Central Park. Some argued that this wasn’t their natural habitat.
But the owls had bred, a sign that something was working, and Paul and other rangers had tagged and attached transmitters to as many as they could find. The owls eventually found a way to ditch the equipment, but for now, Paul was following one into the North Woods.
The park lights illuminated the path, but he left it at the top of the hill, taking an unmarked trail into the trees. He kept his eyes on the receiver, but he was listening for that cry again.
“I heard it,” he’d said ten minutes ago, when he called Clare from his cell phone.
“Really? Where are you?”
“North Woods. Right where you said it would be.”
“Did it sound like crazy laughing?”
“Maniacal,” he said.
“Nothing like any other owl, right?”
“Right.”
“I want to meet you,” she said. “So we can find it together.”
His heart kicked over—seeing her was the point. It was also, given this circumstance, dicey. He wanted to support her theory, and if she actually showed up, she’d find out the shrieks he’d heard probably belonged to kids fooling around in the park at night. He waited for her to say she was heading up, but instead she cleared her throat.
“Um,” she said. “But I can’t leave right now.”
He didn’t speak right away, covering his disappointment. Then, “Are you working?”
“No, something else,” she said.
“Like what?”
“I want to tell you in person.”
“Okay, that’s got me worried,” he said.
“No, don’t worry. It’s really good.”
“Should I come over later?”
“How about if we meet at the ferry tomorrow?” she asked. “Noon?”
“Yeah,” he said. He’d rather see her tonight, but a ferry ride was the next best thing.
“Let me know what you find,” she said.
“Of course I will.”
“What if we’re right? Could it be a descendant of Fastnet’s bird, after a century?”
He stayed silent because he couldn’t flat out lie to her and say what she wanted to hear.
“A dormant egg, a really long gestation—or maybe laughing owls have been in the park all this time. They’re just so shy, we’ve never seen one.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably it.” He listened, heard her laugh, as if she knew how crazy it was. “Okay, see you on the boat tomorrow.”
They’d hung up, and he knew he could have headed home right then. But he kept moving, deeper into the dark. He really had heard insane laughter, and just because it made sense to think it had come from humans didn’t mean he couldn’t have Clare’s wish at heart, her unreasonable desire that something so long gone from the park could return. Or, even better, that it might never have been gone at all.
*
When Sarah left, Clare and Grit went to the guest room. Clare stood in the doorway, staring at the transformation. From the spare landscape of single bed, bureau, writing desk, and chair, Grit had created another world.
“Everything you own?” Clare asked, picking up on what Grit had said before Sarah’s arrival.
“I should have said, ‘Everything I could carry.’ The most important things, anyway.”
“It looks like a dorm room, or a studio apartment. What about Emerson?”
“I should have asked you before putting all my stuff in here, right?”
“Well,” Clare said. She wasn’t sure. She felt the family connection, and a growing sense of herself as an aunt. But she’d lived alone so long, deliberately kept everyone out, and she couldn’t help feeling a bit invaded. Still, there was something so warm about this: Grit’s presence, her belongings, and the fact that she’d come to Clare. “It’s amazing you could create such … coziness in one day, while I was out.”
“Do you know about Himmel?”
“I remember the banner in the Montauk house. Your father used to say he and your mother were made in heaven. That’s what it means, right?”
“Yeah, and he still says that. But it’s all talk, just for show. I prefer another word—Hyglig.” She pronounced it hoog-lee. “It’s a Danish concept of heaven, different than anywhere else in the Western world; it means comfortable, or cozy, and it’s a feeling Danes try to create at home.”
“I love that,” Clare asked.
“It’s so far north. The weather is stormy in winter, and it stays dark for so long. Most families do the best they can. My closest friend, Karin, had the coziest house ever. That’s what I wanted.”
“Your mother must have tried. She grew up with it here.”
“I can tell,” Grit said, looking around. “But it’s more than colors and pretty things. It’s the feeling that matters.”
Clare understood. She walked to the desk, picked up a large snow globe, and shook it. Tiny flakes fell on a small village and a setting crimson sun.
“That’s Ebeltoft,” Grit said.
“I’m sure you’ll be going back for the holidays, or after graduation, won’t you?”
Grit took the snow globe from Clare’s hand, and wound the key to play music.
“A Danish lullaby; ‘The Sun Is So Red, Mother,’” Grit said.
“Did your mother sing it to you?”
“Yes, in English. That used to make my father mad—he wanted us to speak Danish only. So we’d hide from him, and she’d sing it to me.” Grit waited for a place in the music, then sang, “‘The sun is so red, Mother And the woods will get so black Now the sun is dead, Mother And the day has gone away The fox is out there, Mother Now we’re locking our hall Come sit by my pillow, Mother / And sing a little song.’”
“It sounds dark,” Clare said.
“Maybe that’s why we liked it so much,” Grit said.
“What did your father do when he caught her singing in English? Did he ever hit her, Grit? Or you?”
“Just think of Montauk. I think you know the answer to that, and you’ll realize more when you read her diary. Mostly he just seethed in silence, which was scary and, in a way, worse. Or he’d tell her she was mentally ill, unable to be a good wife, a real woman, a decent mother.”
Clare didn’t speak at first. “What did she do?”
“At first she’d cry. When we were little, she did that all the time. She’d say this weird thing, ‘I’m dying of death.’ It scared me so much, and she’d hold me and say she was going to get Gilly and me out of there, we’d leave him and never have to take it again. But she never could. After … well, just later on, when my father said cruel things, she’d just look blank. Nothing could touch her—not even me.”
“I’m sure you helped her,” Clare said.
“No,” Grit said. “I didn’t. He won.”
“I feel that way sometimes,” Clare said. “But he’s your father. What could he win from you? What would he even want to?”
“You really have no idea,” Grit said, sitting on her bed. She held the snow globe, then looked up at Clare.
“Where’s Gillis? Please tell me about him.”
“He couldn’t do anything to help, any more than I could.”
Clare stared at her niece, feeling a sudden ugly ripple under her skin.
“Sarah said you and my mother protected each other,” Grit said. “I wanted that with Gillis, but he had a loneliness inside, wouldn’t let anyone, even me, get close.”
“Do you think it could have been because he’s a boy? Maybe not as expressive as you were?”
“That’s Gilly exactly—but I doubt it had much to do with being a boy. He just learned how to go inside, never come out, never let us in. He figured out a way to turn to stone.”
Clare listened, thinking of how the trial and prison had done that to her. She’d discovered a cave she’d never wanted to find; but she’d crawled all the way to the back, where no one could find her, because she’d stopped trusting everyone.
“Poor Gillis,” Clare said. “It must have killed your mother to see him that way.”
Grit put the snow globe on the desk, opened the top drawer, and stared inside as if looking into Pandora’s box. “This is going to sound insulting,” Grit said, “and I don’t mean it that way at all. But you don’t know anything about her.”
“It’s been years, that’s true, but I know her, Grit. I watched her getting beaten down, and even in court—she lied because that’s what he wanted. She’s in an awful place, but she’s a good person.”
“Good, really? Would a good woman throw her own daughter away?”
“Of course not,” Clare said, shocked by the violence in Grit’s tone.
“Well, that’s what my mother did.” Grit reached into the drawer, handed Clare an envelope.
On Emerson College letterhead, the dean of students wrote that because of tuition nonpayment, Margarita Rasmussen would be unable to register for classes. Financial aid was an option the dean would be more than happy to help her explore. The letter was dated the previous August 11.
“What happened?” Clare asked. “You haven’t been enrolled at all this semester?”
“No,” Grit said.
“‘Nonpayment of tuition’?” Clare tried to understand.
“They stopped paying in the middle of last year, right after first semester.”
“Were you having problems at school?”
“No. I was dean’s list. I loved Emerson. Even though they didn’t send payment for spring semester, I went anyway. I kept getting e-mails from the bursar’s office, telling me I would be locked out of my dorm and kept from attending class if they didn’t receive payment.”
“Did you tell your parents?”
Grit seemed not to hear the question. “Somehow I talked Emerson into believing there had been a glitch with automatic transfer from Danske Bank—that went over for a while. Finally I told the dean, and she helped me get a student loan. Now I owe all last spring’s tuition and board.”
“Why would your parents cut you off?” Clare asked.
“Because I’m no longer part of the family.”
“Grit!”
“They already kicked you out.”
“But you’re their child!”
“I stepped out of line,” Grit said. “You know what that’s like. If you don’t see it their way, it’s over. No second chance.”
“Your father, maybe, but not Anne. She wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Oh yeah, she would. Just like she did to you. You should have heard her scream. It was last Christmas, you know, the supposedly most hyglig time of year—me home from college, Mom decorating the house. And my father in his chair with his feet up, so happy to have us waiting on him.”
“What went wrong?”
“My father said you didn’t exist. I’d always asked about you, and Mom would talk about you when we were alone. I knew you were real, we all did—but my father literally wanted us to believe that you had disappeared—that you were like some evil creature from a Norse myth. You went to prison, and that was the end of your story. If one of us talked about you, he’d break something of ours. I had other snow globes, but not anymore.”
“You said my name?”
“Many times. I wanted to know about you. He hated it.”
“Did that cause the problem last Christmas?”
“Oh, I did something much worse than ask about you. I told him I wanted to meet you. My mother would have understood once. But she didn’t then. Especially because I wrote you a letter.”
“But I never received it!”
“It never got mailed. My father went through all my things and found it in my backpack. He made me read it out loud—my mother lost it, I can’t even stand remembering the sound of her voice.”
“Because you wrote to me?”
“Yeah. She started the minute I read ‘Dear Aunt Clare.’”
“Oh, Anne,” Clare said.
“My father made me burn the letter, and also the notebook I’d written it in. The same fire pit in our backyard where we’d burned everything about you years ago. Mom stood there watching, just as angry as he was. When the notebook was all ash and just the charred metal spiral was left, my father fished it from the coals with tongs. He made my mother take it in her hand.”
“Just out of the fire?” Clare asked.
Grit nodded. “Yeah.”
“What happened then?” Clare asked, feeling sick.
“He told her to tell me I wasn’t her daughter anymore,” Grit said. “And she did. And she meant it.”
“Grit, I’m sure it was just that terrible moment—he’s crazy, and she must have felt afraid he would hurt you the way he had her.”
“Actually she hurt me,” Grit said. “My mother smacked me across the neck with that glowing hot spiral. That’s how I got this.”
Grit tilted her head to one side, so Clare could see the owl tattoo just below her ear. Leaning close, Clare saw that the ink covered narrow scars: hatch marks left by a notebook’s red-hot metal spine.
Grit said nothing, but touched Clare’s scarred hand.
“She did that to you? I can’t believe it,” Clare said, barely hearing Grit. “Did he tell her to?”
“No. She just lost it, went out of her mind. The burn hurt about a thousand times less than hearing her say, ‘You’re not my daughter anymore.’”
“She didn’t mean it,” Clare said. “She couldn’t have, Grit.”
When Grit didn’t answer, Clare gently touched the tattoo, the tiny Danish words inscribed in the owl’s body.
“You wouldn’t have gotten ‘I love you’ tattooed on your neck if you didn’t know that about her. The owl is for your mother, right?”
Grit raised her eyes to meet Clare’s. Clare felt sorrow at the expression on her niece’s face.
“I didn’t want to lie to you,” Grit said. “I couldn’t tell you the truth until you knew the story, but jeg hader dig means ‘I hate you.’”
Clare tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. They hugged, and she left Grit to go to her own room. The black journal lay on her bed, where she’d left it. Closing the door behind her, Clare opened to the first page. In the top right corner, it was dated two years earlier. She began to read.
From Anne’s diary:
Here I go, a brand new notebook. How many have I written over the years, and more to the point, why do I bother? When I think back to being young, starting a journal at 15, 16, into college, how everything would be about boys, and how earnest and innocent and full of hope all that writing was. As if putting dreams on the page could somehow make them come true. I wish I still believed that.
So why do I do it? The blank page of a brand new diary seems a good place to ask. I keep doing it, no matter how life goes, and trust me I’ve no dreams left. Maybe I’m just putting everything down for the record. So after I die, Grit can find this and know what her mother was really thinking.
But honestly, do I want her or anyone reading this garbage? No. Part of me holds on to the last bit of illusion and imagines that people—even Grit—don’t know what’s really going on. Frederik trained me well, right from the beginning, to show the world how perfect we are. Do you know, I think he truly thinks that? He has no sense of nightmare. I didn’t used to, either. For so many years! If I could look back through all my journals, I’m sure I’d see a different self at each stage, like a woman in a horror movie who thinks everything is wonderful until it methodically begins to dawn on her that she’s living with a demon.
Well, that’s something! Congratulations to me. This is the first notebook where I’ve dared to write that down. Not because I’m afraid he will find this—I’ve got too fantastic a hiding place, he’d never look, that’s been proven out over the years—but because I never let myself say it before. Awareness always shocks me. It’s a rock between tides. Sometimes the wave rolls out, and the rock is exposed, and I see. Then the sea rushes in, covers the surface, and I wonder, was it really there, did I only imagine it? That’s what life with Frederik is like. It’s always a push-pull between what I feel and what I’m told I feel.
