Cackle, page 6
Even if she isn’t, technically speaking, I think being that gorgeous and owning the only liquor store in town grants her sovereignty.
“Morning, Erik,” she says. “This is my new friend, Annie. She just moved here.”
“Hi, Annie,” he says. He’s very Tiger Beat, very CW. Striking blue eyes, good hair. He and the older guy, who I assume is his father, wear matching red flannels.
“Sophie,” the man says, “the usual?”
“No, Oskar,” she says. “Make us something special. Something festive. I want to impress Annie.”
“All right,” he says. He looks over at us. He’s got the same blue eyes as Erik, but his are attached to deep crow’s-feet. I bet he smells like coffee grounds and firewood and is a good dad. He and his son work together, passing beans and cups and cartons of milk like it’s a choreographed dance.
He’s attractive, but I’m not attracted to him. I want him to adopt me. Teach me how to make a solid cappuccino and tell me he’s proud of me.
While I’m distracted by my daddy issues, Sophie tucks a daisy behind my ear.
“I don’t know yet,” she says, “if daisies are your flower.”
She slides her bouquet into an empty mason jar resting on the ledge in front of us. I think it’s meant for tips.
“My flower?”
“I think everyone has a flower that reflects them. Their personality, their essence.”
“What’s yours?”
“I fancy myself ranunculus.”
“Do you?” I ask. I don’t know what a ranunculus is, but I don’t want her to know that. She seems very into flowers.
“Yes. A deep purple or burgundy ranunculus. They’re my absolute favorite. They don’t like the heat and need lots of sunlight, so we’re similar in that way.”
Oskar sets down two lattes with pretty leaf designs in the foam.
“Maple cinnamon,” he says.
“Oh, thank you, Oskar,” Sophie says. She picks them both up and then hands one to me. “Sounds lovely.”
He bows his head like his son did. “Would hate to disappoint you.”
There’s something a bit grim about how he says it. Sophie bats her lashes at him. They play a short, silent game. I don’t know the rules, but I know Oskar loses. He looks away, wiping his hands on a dirty rag.
“Come,” Sophie says to me. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“Bye, Sophie!” Erik says.
“Good-bye, Erik. Be good,” she calls over her shoulder as we walk away. She leads me to a paved sidewalk that curls around a patch of woods. On the other side is a small park. A playground, a few benches and a beautiful storybook gazebo. It’s almost too much. Too perfect. Too picturesque.
I take a sip of my coffee, and it, too, is wonderful.
“You like it?” she asks me. “Oskar owns the Good Mug on Main Street.”
“What’s his deal?” I ask. This is the kind of thing girlfriends talk about, right? Is this how we bond? Or was that an awkward and intrusive question and maybe I should just leave?
Sophie sighs. “I don’t like to share anyone’s secrets, but I will say this. He’s a very complicated, haunted man.”
I follow Sophie up the steps to the gazebo. There are two girls already inside sitting on the ground instead of on the built-in bench. They’re close to each other. They might be playing one of those hand-slapping games, or trading secrets, or practicing kissing.
When they see Sophie, they shoot up.
“Hello, Miss Sophie,” they say in unison.
“Hello, girls,” Sophie says. She pats each of them on the head. When she does this, the girls eye each other. I watch color flood their cheeks.
“We were just leaving,” one of them says. “Bye!”
“Bye, now,” Sophie says, waving.
The way people react to her . . . is there something I’m missing? Or is she just so beautiful that people don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re around her?
She sits on the bench and I park myself next to her. She sets her coffee down, removes the sleeve and wraps her hands around the naked cup.
“Did you use to date? Oskar, I mean,” I say. I regret it immediately. I don’t know what to do with myself around her. How to act. “I thought there was a vibe.”
“Me and Oskar? Oh, no,” she says, laughing. “No, no. I don’t bother with men in that way. Or women. Or anyone. I haven’t for a long, long time. I’ve discovered, over the years, that I’m much happier alone.”
The words land square in the center of my forehead. Much. Happier. Alone.
“Are you all right, Annie?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I just . . . My boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend . . . We just . . . I’m just going through a recent breakup. We were together for almost ten years. We lived together. I thought we were going to get married. So it’s a big . . . It’s an adjustment.”
I try to retract the tears into my eyes by sheer force of will. I feel one escape.
“Oh, Annie,” she says. She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just hard.”
“I’m sure,” she says.
“We’re on good terms, which helps. It wasn’t contentious. Sometimes things don’t work out.”
“Mm,” she says, sipping her coffee. She gazes out into space, thinking something. Then she says, “I’m inclined to hate him.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “No, he really didn’t do anything wrong. We think we’re probably just better as friends.”
“This all seems quite diplomatic,” she says. “What you’re saying. Your words. But your face.”
She cradles my face, chin to cheek, in her warm palm.
“Your face, your eyes, they tell me another story,” she says, gently removing her hand. “But you can tell me that one another time. Or not at all. It’s your story to tell or never to tell.”
I shrug. “I’m not sure there is much of a story.”
She nods, but it’s a skeptical nod. She doesn’t believe me. And she shouldn’t. There is a story. Of course there is. It’s just a bad one. I thought I was settled in a stable, long-term relationship, which led to a complacency on my end that slowly eroded the romance. It’s sad and painful and, maybe worst of all, boring. I wouldn’t make her sit through it. I can barely stand it myself.
“You may not believe me,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper, “but I am older than I look. And the thing about age is, it gifts you with incredible wisdom. So you must trust me, and all my incredible wisdom, when I tell you that, though you’re hurting now and it surely feels like it’s a permanent state, like a fog that will never lift, I promise you it will.”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“But,” she says, pausing to take a sip of her coffee, “you’ll discover for yourself soon enough the things that devastate us most in the moment are always the things we look back on with such gratitude.”
I wish I could believe her. I want to, but I can’t let go of my cynicism. I have to keep it close, tucked under my seat like an inflatable life vest. I’m too afraid of what will happen if I allow myself to become hopeful. What terrible disappointments will attack while I’m stupid happy and unprepared.
She sets down her coffee, and I see it. A spider. It’s moseying along the ledge toward Sophie.
“There’s a spider,” I tell her, pointing. “There are a lot of spiders here.”
“There’s a lot of nature,” she says, turning to look at it. “Hello, little friend.”
I let the spider crawl onto the discarded lid of my coffee cup, then tip the lid over the edge of the gazebo. The spider lands in a shrub.
“Beautiful little creatures, aren’t they?”
“Eh,” I say. “They’re creatures. I don’t like to kill them.”
“It’s bad luck,” she says. She turns her hand into a spider and creeps it up my forearm. “So, Annie, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Don’t have any.”
“No plans? Hmm, interesting. No plans,” she says. She’s plotting something. The corners of her mouth slowly curl into a grin.
“What?” I ask her.
“Now you can’t say no to me when I ask you to come over, because I know you have no other plans,” she says, laughing. “I’m in the mood to make pie. Would you like to come over and make some pie?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ve never made pie before.”
“I love to make pie. I find it very relaxing,” she says. “Let’s go pick up some berries, and then we can go to my place, yes?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
She stands up and reaches out for my hand. There’s another spider. A smaller one. Brownish. It’s crawling along Sophie’s finger. I open my mouth to warn her, but she already knows. She leans down, moves toward the ledge, then transforms her finger into a bridge for the spider to cross. I’m amazed that it actually does. It walks in a straight line along Sophie’s finger onto the ledge of the gazebo.
“You’re the spider whisperer,” I say.
“They’re uncomplicated,” she says. “Humans are complicated.”
I follow her out of the gazebo and back to the tents. Everyone we pass smiles at us, bows their head, says, “Good morning. Good morning, Sophie!” or “Sophie! How are you?” I experienced the town’s general friendliness earlier, but this is different. Excessive. The people fawn over her. I watch their expressions as they see her, as her presence dawns on their faces.
I look at her. She is stunningly gorgeous. Superhuman. I should be intimidated. I should feel like a hideous troll walking beside someone so insanely beautiful, but I don’t. I’m just content to soak in her glow. And she’s so nice and open and warm and funny. It’s that rumored phenomenon I never believed in; I feel like I’ve known her my whole life.
So why are these people who know her acting so weird around her?
I turn to her. “Are you famous?”
She laughs. “What?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Seems like you’re a big deal around here.”
She rolls her eyes. “I own a lot of land. Real estate. It’s silly.”
“You’re their landlord?”
She winces. “I don’t like that term. ‘Lord.’ ”
She erupts into whole-body shivers, like saying the word was physically painful.
I mime zipping my lips. “I won’t say it.”
“I hope you won’t think of me differently now,” she says, “or after you see my house.”
We stop in front of a tent where cartons of fresh berries are for sale. Ripe pink strawberries. Chubby blueberries and raspberries. The most beautiful blackberries I’ve ever seen, clusters of dark bubbles shining like satin. Sophie goes for the blackberries. She plucks one from a pile and slips it into her mouth.
There’s an ancient woman sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the tent.
“These are delicious, Tilda,” Sophie says to her. “I’ll take four cartons. Do you have a bag?”
The old woman nods and attempts to get up.
“No, no, darling. Just tell me where,” Sophie says.
Tilda points and Sophie follows. She sets the berries down to grab a large paper bag. She holds it open, and I put the berries inside.
“Teamwork!” she says, smiling. Her teeth are pearly white and perfect. “Good-bye, Tilda.”
Sophie doesn’t pay for the berries. She just takes them. I look back at Tilda, who gives a tepid wave.
Sophie leans into me and says, “Tilda and her incessant chatting. Are you all right to walk, pet?”
“Sure,” I say.
“It’s not too far, but we’ll have to cut through the wood.”
“That’s fine.”
“All right, here we go. This way.”
She leads me between two large grayish trees. At first I think there might be a path, but I was deceived by pale dirt. There is no path. We’re just wandering through the woods.
“I hope you don’t mind the forest,” she says. “I’ve always found it peaceful, but I know not everyone shares my view.”
“I haven’t spent much time outdoors,” I say. “My dad took me camping once. It was kind of a disaster. Rained the whole time.”
“Camping,” she says. “You have to be a true enthusiast to enjoy sleeping on the ground.”
“Yeah,” I say.
The memory of the camping trip seeps through my whole body. The rain hammering against my poncho. It stuck to me like a second skin. I remember shivering, listening to my teeth chatter. There was no fire; it was too wet. No hot dogs. No s’mores. We ate cold beans out of aluminum cans with plastic spoons. We slept in separate tents. I spent the night waiting for a boogeyman to rip open my tent with a bloody hook. I thought it would be funny, because he would expect to find a scared little girl screaming her head off, but instead it’d be me, sighing, pulling down the collar of my pajama top for easier access to my carotid artery. Hello, sir. Would you kindly put me out of my misery?
We pass an old stone well. It’s been devoured by moss.
“The well,” she says, “is how you know you’re getting close.”
“Old well in the middle of the woods,” I say. “Not creepy at all.”
She laughs. “Wait until the headstones.”
I assume she’s kidding until a minute later, when I see them. A small circle of headstones, chipped and worn and weathered. I can’t read what they say; whatever inscriptions were there have been eroded by time.
“Shit,” I say. One of them is split, and some kind of green goo oozes from the crack. More moss? Caterpillar guts? Inside the circle rests a mound of dead flowers.
“I like to lay flowers,” she says, “or a wreath.”
“It’s just a random cemetery?” I ask.
She sighs.
“The earth is a giant cemetery,” she says. “Not to be morbid, but it’s true.”
“Right.”
“Here we are,” she says. “See it?”
Between the trees is a small hut. An assembly of sticks with a thatched roof partially caved in.
“I’m only joking,” she says. “If I had better jokes, I would tell them.”
“What if I’d been like, ‘Oh, wow, so nice, so cute.’ ”
“I would know you were a dirty liar with a heart of gold.”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen some apartments in the city that aren’t as nice as that shack and are way more expensive.”
“Dreadful,” she says. “All right, this is slippery right here, so let me help you.”
The ground slopes upward, and Sophie climbs, holding up her dress. I don’t know how she manages to look so graceful climbing, but she does. When she’s at the top, she reaches back for me.
I accept her hand and use it to steady myself. I fear I’ll take us both down, but she’s solid. She keeps us upright.
“We’re out of the woods!” she says. “I’ll reward you with tea and treats and pie.”
She threads her arm through mine, so we’re linked at our elbows. For a moment, the bright early-afternoon sun burns a hole through my vision. I close my eyes and watch the rust-colored orb float there. When it begins to fade, I open my eyes again and am stopped dead by what’s before me.
“Is that your house?” I ask. It’s a stupid question, because the structure at the bottom of the hill isn’t a house, the same way a T. rex isn’t an iguana.
It’s basically Versailles.
“Yes,” she says, her voice heavy and slow with reluctance, as if she’s a child admitting to coloring on the walls. “It would have been torn down if it had stayed empty. I thought it would be such a shame to destroy something so beautiful, with so much promise, just because it was out here alone, having lost some of its former glory.”
I’m not sure how it could possibly be more glorious. Parisian limestone with intricate carvings, multiple turrets, dormers, wonderfully ugly gargoyles leering from high above. Two massive wings unfurl from a hulking center tower with a conical roof trimmed with greening ornamental copper.
It looks like a famous museum or a summer palace for royals. It doesn’t look like a residential home. For one person. I can’t believe she lives here. Château Sophie.
“What do you think?” she asks me. “You’re being quiet and I’m nervous.”
“It’s incredible. Are you kidding?”
Her cheeks go pink, and she claps a hand to her face. “Oh, I don’t know. Everyone has their own opinions.”
“I don’t know if it’s a matter of opinion,” I say. “It’s gorgeous.”
Now that I think about it, it suits her. I can’t imagine her living anywhere else. Her home is as beautiful and enchanting as she is.
“It’s not the coziest,” she says as we approach an enormous arched doorway. Sophie pauses, then digs inside her cleavage.
“Forgive me,” she says.
For what? I want to ask. For being impossibly endearing?
“Got it,” she says, pulling out a large iron key.
“That can’t be comfortable,” I say, “to have that wedged in your bra.”
“No more comfortable than the bra itself,” she says. “All right, welcome home.”
She pushes open the door, its hinges howling in complaint.
We step into a grand foyer. Far, far above me hangs the largest chandelier I’ve ever seen. Layers of crystals dripping, shimmering in the light, projecting pastels along the limestone walls.
A majestic staircase coils its way up, up, up. There’s an ornate gold banister on one side, on the other a series of Gothic wrought iron sconces.
“Don’t look at anything for too long,” she says. “You’ll see cobwebs. Dancing dust mites. This place is terribly difficult to maintain.”
“Uh, yeah. I’d imagine. You clean it yourself?”
She nods. “Mm. Sometimes I invite in some woodland creatures. They sweep. I sing.”
