Little Bird, page 8
It was a deep relief to hear this, and as Josie fiddled with her cookie, she felt the knot in her chest slowly, carefully unspool. “How did you make her stop?”
“Pardon?”
“How did you make her go away?”
“Who said she ever did?”
Whatever relief her insides were granted immediately reversed, leaving her tenser than before. Perhaps the scientists she’d eventually will her cadaver to would discover how a person could attain such mythic levels of anxiety. Until then, she’d be here sipping tea and collapsing like a black hole.
“I knew I shouldn’t have made that deal. Fuck.”
Now it was Sue’s turn to be astonished. “What deal?”
“The deal? Wait, did I fuck up? Like I know I did, that’s not up for debate, but did I really fuck up?”
“What exactly did you agree to?”
Perhaps she hadn’t been wise to hand out all this background information so freely. What did she even know about Sue, aside from her excellent taste in cookies and poor taste in fanny packs? “I’m not exactly sure.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Well, excuse me if, in a moment of desperation, I made an ill-advised handshake deal with an inhuman creature.”
“You shook her hand?”
“I was under duress!”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“I disagree.” Josie reached for another cookie, taking three in one hand and daring Sue to say anything about it. “Besides, why don’t you just ask her yourself? You said she never left.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just call her on the phone.”
“Who said anything about a phone? She’s literally right on the other side of this fence. She’s probably listening to our conversation as we speak.”
The women paused, both having not considered this until spoken aloud. Josie had avoided a backward glance because of the vines, but now she couldn’t get the idea of Skelly with her bald skull pressed against the concrete blocks, straining to catch the newest gossip. Not that Skelly, with all her infinite wisdom and power, would need to do such a thing—although she might, if only to be a condescending ass.
Then again, Josie had a sense—maybe the same thing Sue mentioned—of when Skelly was present and ready to engage. The sensation was soundless and motionless but pulled on Josie’s core like a magnet. She didn’t feel it now. Still, she looked.
Vines curled over the lip of the fence, feeling their way into Sue’s yard as if blind and stopping inches from Josie’s feet. She yanked her body away from them, squishing both legs onto the small patio chair. “I don’t think Skelly’s there.”
Sue drummed her fingers against the table. “She isn’t.”
“Where does she go? And how do I get her to stay there?”
“The answer to both questions is ‘I don’t know.’”
“Great.”
“This is out of character,” Sue said, staring into the distance.
“What’s out of character?”
“What did she feel like?”
Josie did not like the suggestion that Skelly’s bizarre behavior was even more out of character than already suspected.
“She felt like bone. Cold and dusty and old. She felt like a dusty corpse.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She said a lot of things, but I’d like to know exactly what you consider out of character. Her entire existence is out of character if you ask me.”
Sue waved away her question, a sour expression twisting her lips. “The whole thing. A deal, allowing you to touch her. You, of all people.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what you think. Who are you, really?”
The conversation was speeding into oncoming traffic. “I am no one. Just a sad, single lady living with her dog. I’ve done nothing. I’ve been nothing. I have nothing on my horizon, so if you’re trying to insinuate that Skelly getting all chummy with me is because of some mystical heritage on my part, I’m here to tell you that is absurd.”
“I’m thinking out loud,” Sue said, shoulders straightening with every word. “And besides, you completely misinterpreted what I meant.”
“I assume you don’t need me to stick around then if you aren’t even speaking to me directly.” Josie rose to leave, but Sue snatched at her wrist, seating her again with the intensity of her glare.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers you really want. I don’t know why she chose you—or why she chooses anybody for that matter. I don’t know what she wants from you. She seems to want different things from different people. I don’t know why the vines are so attracted to you or why they are so … lively.”
She tried to cut Sue’s speech short with a snotty dismissal, but the woman held up a commanding hand that stayed her mouth.
“But here is what I do know—she has been silent for quite a while. I haven’t spoken to her in years before now. And she has never, in my knowledge and experience, allowed anyone to touch her.”
“Not like I wanted to, she basically made me.”
“To seal the deal.”
Josie nodded.
“I have no idea what she is up to.”
Josie was instantly aware of the chair in which she sat—every rod, rim, and pattern—as if branding itself into her skin. The desire to get out of dodge was immediate. Sue’s befuddlement wasn’t an act, which was upsetting.
“She asked me to tell her a story. That was the deal. I had three days to come up with a story she’d never heard before. How do I come up with a story a thing like her has never heard?”
Dragging her finger over the rim of her mug, Sue lifted her cup for a drink but changed her mind. “A story?”
“I keep thinking about fairy tales, but there’s a reason I can recall those without working too hard. They’re part of the narrative already, implanted in the collective soul or something. I don’t know, I’m sounding stupid right now. I’m just at a loss. I went to talk to her yesterday and things went poorly. I think she can read minds.”
Sue scoffed, but not in an offensive way. “I don’t think she can, actually. I do think she’s lived long enough to understand the human condition in a way neither you nor I could ever fathom.”
“Which makes our deal all the more insulting. What the fuck does she expect to learn from me?”
“Perhaps that’s why she asked.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe this has less to do with you than you think.”
“Like she’s having some sort of existential crisis or something?”
Sue settled back in her seat, plucking another cookie from the package. “I wouldn’t go that far. Besides, if she were to have an existential crisis, as you put it, I’d expect it to have happened a millennia ago. Her behavior is odd, though. Something has prompted this, and I’m not entirely sure it has much to do with you.”
“Well, that isn’t exactly encouraging, Sue. Because I was fine before she and the vines rolled up. Just living my little life. It took forever to carve out a little piece of sanity for myself after the divorce and my dad and all that, and just when I get settled, Skelly shows up like a fucking firecracker in my oven. I didn’t ask for her interference and I don’t want it now that it’s here. I just want her to leave me alone.”
Josie kept careful watch of the flaring expressions on Sue’s face—all of them so minute another person might have missed them. Her twist of the lips could be mistaken for a twitch, a flash of her brown eyes only a brief reflection of the afternoon sun, and her slow, creeping smile that was gone as soon as it started. If not for Josie’s developed skill of reading faces in the absence of spoken words—reference; her marriage, her mother, et cetera—she might not have caught the amusement. But she did, which made what Sue said next even more unsettling.
“That’s where you are wrong, Josie dear. For your Skelly, as she’s named herself, never goes where she’s not invited.”
Josie hovered over her knees. Her body was a tight ball of bad decisions. After tea and cookies with Sue, she’d returned home and wretched everything she’d just consumed, still purging the previous night from her body. Afterward, everything shut down—her arms, legs, fingers, and brain, each powering down like a busted robot until nothing but the very basics operated on their own accord. Sleep crashed into her, and when she finally awoke the house was visible only from the glow of her phone.
Her first thought went to Po, who she discovered tucked under her right knee, hot with sleep and snoring. He stretched his paws and whined as she righted herself, both fighting off the delirium of an epic nap.
The previous night and tea and Sue and vines all seemed like a bad dream. It took her more than a few minutes to sort herself out, flipping on lights as she tripped through the house toward the kitchen. Every fiber of her body needed water. She didn’t even bother with the Brita filter pitcher in the fridge and used the nearest cup to funnel water down her throat, most of which landed on the front of her shirt. Her hair and pants were sticky with sweat. She leaned against the counter and tried to piece out the past few days in her head.
Had she fallen asleep so hard that she had one of those out-of-body experiences? A lucid dream? She’d heard of them lasting days, or what seemed like days to the dreamer. Could that be what had happened to her?
There was a simple way to answer her question—just peek outside—but her feet rooted themselves to the tile, terrified on behalf of her sanity to dispel the easy notion that none of the past few days had been real. The split-second comfort of slipping back into her old life was intoxicating.
Then she remembered the gold. A quick answer and she could avoid the yard altogether. Trotting at her heels was Po, chittering nervously. How long had she been asleep? He was probably hungry.
The front door was unlocked and ajar, which was a fun discovery after a blackout nap, but she didn’t have the energy to worry about an intruder on the premises. Po’s nervous but silent demeanor meant if someone had tried to enter her home, they were long gone by now. Po would never let a stranger root around the living room without a good shouting.
Flinging the door open, her eyes fell to the pot where she’d stashed the gold bar. If gone, it could mean someone had stolen it, or she’d lost it or moved it in her sleep. Or that the gold had been a figment of her imagination.
As she leaned over the pot a glittery, golden brick winked back at her.
Josie didn’t bother closing the door as she wobbled to the back of the house, tossing hand-tacked sheets over Po as she ripped her makeshift drapes from the wall. She wasn’t even sure what to expect—perhaps Skelly leering at her just on the other side of the glass, or vines writhing like ooze across the patio floor. What she saw instead was darkness. Disoriented and awaiting the bleary moonlight to filter through the window she instead received darkness, but upon closer inspection, she realized why—vines. The shadows cast upon them from her kitchen light exposed all the nooks and crannies of their forms weaving in and out and in between one another and forming an impenetrable blockade.
Not even the door budged as she yanked on the handle as if they’d suctioned themselves to the glass. Nosing his way out of the clump of sheets, Po issued an irritated yelp before settling himself on his kitchen chair.
Lacking any better ideas, Josie pounded on the glass the same way she did when Po barked too much at the sound of a distant lawnmower. The vines, however, were less impressed with her frustration, which was to say they showed zero indication of moving at all.
She pounded again, this time with more force. “Get the fuck off my door,” she said.
At her explicit command, they moved. Vines unknotted with intricate flurries, zipping away from the house and curling around Skelly’s center throne. Atop the throne sat Skelly herself, glaring in Josie’s immediate direction.
Despite the gold and the vines, Josie had still clung to some sort of hope that Skelly would be gone. Seeing her sent dread crashing to Josie’s feet.
Skelly didn’t speak as Josie slipped through the door, calming her jangled nerves by leaning against the wall. A wave of post-hangover nausea stilled her annoyance, afraid of what might come out if she opened her mouth.
“Feeling better?”
Josie simply stared at her. She was not better. If anything, she felt much, much worse.
“That was one hell of a bender, Little Bird. Something for the ages.”
“The bards shall speak of it long after my passing, no doubt.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Oh, so you’re a bard now?”
“I’ve already explained I am.”
“That’s not what Sue thinks.” Though saying this did not fluster Skelly in the slightest.
“And what does our dear Sue think?”
Sue had no idea, just conjecture and theories. Her neighbor hadn’t mentioned anything about what she thought Skelly might be, but at least they were talking now. Josie refused to let the opportunity go to waste.
“She seemed to think you were behaving strangely. Even for you.”
Skelly seemed to consider this, or Josie intimated she might be considering this due to her lack of immediate retort.
“Strange to her does not equivocally mean strange.”
“Is there a strangeness threshold I’m not aware of?”
“If there was, my threshold would be vastly different than yours.”
“Did you appear to Sue the same way you have to me?”
“And how have I appeared to you?”
“A nuisance. A squatter.” Even as she said this, Sue’s castigation was in the back of her mind, looping over and over.
She never goes where she’s not invited.
Josie wanted to ask Skelly more but knew if she did Skelly would only talk circles around her, replacing the answer with ten more questions.
“Why do you assume that?”
“Because all I want is for you to leave and you refuse.” Nausea welled up again. She swallowed it down.
“And if that were truly the case, I would.”
Having sat on the comment an entire two seconds, she said, “Sue said you never go anywhere you’re not invited.” Subtlety was never one of her strong suits.
“Sue is correct.”
“Well, I didn’t invite you here.”
“Not politely, you didn’t. In fact, I would say right now is a terribly inconvenient time for me to be tied up, but such is life.”
“That wouldn’t have something to do with the three-day time frame you gave me?”
“Maybe.”
“What is going to happen at the end of the three days?”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m just going to die, I might as well go relax and watch TV or something, instead of being nauseous out here with you.”
“Why don’t you take a seat?”
Vines raced toward her, tangling into a cushion for Josie to sit. Apprehensive at first, her exhaustion soon overrode all other senses.
“How about a quick little story?”
“I’m tired of stories.”
“Impossible. Besides, I feel this one might be of particular interest to you.”
This did not sound promising whatsoever. Not one little bit.
“This is a simple story. A story of a father who would take his child out to sea. They would bounce over the waves in their small boat, never speaking to one another. Both said this was because the wind was too loud, the waves too mesmerizing, and still both wondered if it wasn’t because neither had much to say.
“Every time they boarded their boat, the father would ask the daughter if she’d like to learn how to drive. Driving wasn’t difficult and perfectly within the daughter’s capabilities. A lesson or two and she would have mastered it. But her answer was always the same. What do you think it was?”
The question did not register as Josie was certain she was mid-way through a minor stroke. She knew this story. It was her story.
How did Skelly know this story and why was she telling it? What was she doing, uprooting pieces of her that were never meant to be unearthed? Rage didn’t course through her, but rather something else. Something emptying, a vacuum.
“The answer was always no. Not out of spite or irritation or even laziness, rather out of comfort. Her place was a worn spot near the starboard side, cushion darkened by the many visits of her body. The father whizzed them over the waves, wholly in command. Each of them observers, those who knew them would say nothing slipped past them, but here on the ocean these two left their bodies, forgot about everything before and behind them, and floated. This was their passion, and it was never the same when a guest tagged along, as rarely as that happened. Most who invaded this bonded space never desired to return, acutely aware of the violation the moment the boat rocked against the docks upon boarding.
“Until the father became ill. Fatigue. Pneumonia. Upper respiratory issues and recurrent sinus infections. The price of getting older, they thought. And they were right, however naïve of the cost. Disease soon anchored them to shore, suffocating them both more viciously than the cancer. The daughter decided to teach herself how to drive the boat. She took lessons in between doctor’s visits and hospital stays. She hired a captain for a day. She traveled to the docks and washed the outside of the boat, became scuba certified, and dove beneath to scrub the barnacles off the hull. She replaced the brittle pieces corroded by salt, all the while assuring her father that one day they would return to the sea, and when they did, she promised to let him teach her to drive, refusing to steal the honor of passing his knowledge to her the way all of the most valuable knowledge is passed. He needn’t know of her lessons, only marvel at her skill, at his gift of teaching. He might understand the truth, but that was irrelevant. They rarely spoke anyway.”
