Don't You Cry (25 page)

Alex

I'm the first one at the library when it opens for the day. I'm waiting outside at the top of a small stairway, beside the white exterior columns, when the librarian unlocks the door. She takes her time inserting the key in the lock, and then checks her watch to be certain it's nine o'clock. Nine o'clock and not a moment before. And then she opens the door as I breeze past inhaling her potent hair spray, and she says to me, “First one here,” as if that wasn't already obvious, the fact that I was the first one here, the
only
one here. I mutter a quick,
Yup,
and then hurry on, to one of the computer terminals, which I haven't bothered to reserve in advance. That thought never even crossed my mind. Though I'm the only one here, the librarian tracks me down, anyway, scanning my library card because, as she says,
Rules are rules
. And I've already broken one of the twenty-seven rules about using the library's computer terminals. I watch as she gives me a disapproving look and then withdraws slowly from view. The only people at the library this morning are the other librarians, two older women who file carts worth of returned books. They disappear into the stacks making the books all alphabetical and orderly so that later people can come and muss it all up. It must drive them insane.

I don't have a lot of information on which to go, but I do know that the cemetery plot where Genevieve was supposed to be buried...it's empty. I try hard to exhume from memory the stories of little five-year-old Genevieve before she drowned in that bathtub. I wasn't born yet; I wasn't even a blip on the radar. To me she was always a ghost. She was never a child, but rather the purported specter in the window of the home across the street, a wraith in white wafting from room to room, calling for her mother. But to others she was a child once.

I look online and this is what I come to learn. For thirty-four smackers, I can request birth and death certificates from the State of Michigan's vital records office, but I have to mail in a request, pay twelve bucks more to have it expedited and then wait. I don't have time to wait. I need the answers now. By the looks of it, the vital records office may or may not even send me the information I need; seems much of it—birth records, in particular—is confidential. I don't really need Genevieve's birth certificate, anyway, but her death certificate would come in handy, something to help me understand why that casket is empty.

I try another angle. I research the old house, hoping to find some sort of chain of title so I can track down the family that once lived there. Unfortunate thing is, that house has been abandoned so long it predates the world of Zillow and Trulia. The bankruptcies and foreclosures I pull up online all happened over the past couple of years, a dumpy duplex on the west side of town, a slummy home on the east and a couple dozen more listings in between. A sign of the times, I guess. It's sad, all those people tossed out of their homes because they can't pay the bills. Pretty soon, Pops and I will be there, too, standing on some busy four-way intersection, bearing cardboard signs that read Homeless and Please Help, feeling grateful for a buck or two.

I do a quick scan for Genevieve's obituary online, hoping to find a name there for next of kin. But this is what I find: nada, nothing. I type in her name followed by the word
obituary
, and then check twice to be sure I've spelled the words correctly. I add in the name of our tiny little town to narrow the search field, but it comes up empty. Well, not empty, per se, but it pulls up a whole bunch of trash I don't want or need: a middle-aged lady from Hamilton, Ohio; a Dominican nun from Nashville, Tennessee, dead at the age of eighty-two. Not my Genevieve. Far as I can tell, there isn't an obituary for the little girl anywhere. Maybe it's just that it's been twenty-some years since she died, or maybe it's something else.

A librarian passes by and I inquire about microfilm, hoping I might find a two-decade-old obituary from the local paper stored there. She stands before me with a pair of bifocals dangling from a golden chain, her hair a latticework of white. She might just be the oldest person I've ever seen, and while I follow her through the library and to the microfilm reader squirreled away on the other side—passing two younger librarians who are no doubt faster and more technologically adept than she and thinking this is all a colossal waste of time—it turns out she's exactly the person I need.

Before we ever even make it to the microfilm machine, she asks of me, “Doing research?” and I say, “I guess you could call it that.”

“What kind of information are you looking for?” she asks in a helpful sort of way, not nosy, and though I hesitate, I tell her. “I'm trying to get some information on that old abandoned home out on Laurel Avenue.”

She stops. “What kind of information are you looking for?” she asks. I have her attention, and whether or not I want it, I don't know. But I don't have the first clue how to use a microfilm machine, and so it seems I'm going to need her help with this.

“Just trying to figure out who used to live there,” I say casually, like this is no big deal at all. But her answer is completely unexpected. Her voice and her demeanor change, and she looks at me like I'm either a complete idiot or I've been living under a giant sedimentary rock.

“You don't need a microfilm machine for that,” she says, leaning in close, the smell of her Aqua Net hair spray making me want to retch. “I can tell you who used to live in that house,” she says, her face just inches away so I can see the eroding teeth, the transparency of her corrugated skin, and though I'm expecting the obvious, for her to say something cryptic and obscure about the ghost of Genevieve, what she says turns my world on end and makes me question everything I once thought I knew was true.

My Dearest,

You took my family away from me, and now you need to know how it feels to lose something you love. It was your fault I had to go. I want to be sure you know. They told me I was a bad girl, and that was why I couldn't stay. But we both know that's not true.

It wasn't that girl's fault. You should know that. It was yours. I wish I could say that I care that she's gone, but I don't. It had to be done. It was simple, it really was, a sleight of hand: swapping the flour while you were at work. You really must get better locks on your doors, my dear. You don't want strangers skulking around your home when you're not there.

It was priceless, too, watching from my vantage point as you scooped that flour into a bowl, and then fed it to your poor, unsuspecting friend. The grasping at her neck, the vomiting, the scene spiraling so quickly out of control. Better than I could have ever imagined. Priceless, it was. Just priceless. I had to wait days for you to serve that fallacious flour, but it was well worth the wait. Well worth the wait as I watched the scene play out before me, like a performance I had scripted myself. Absolutely perfect.

Unfortunate, really unfortunate, too, that I'd done away with the girl's EpiPen. That would have come in handy, wouldn't it have? It's mine now.

It's your fault I came back, you know. You're the one who found me. You could have just let me be. Were it not for you, I never would have discovered that I was already dead.

If only you could see me now, sweet Esther. If only you could see what I've become.

I've been watching you for a while now, long enough to know your habits, your customs, your routine. I've been trailing you to work, to school. On your errands. Did you see me? Did you know that I was there?

I shop where you shop and I dress how you dress. The same shoes, the same coat, the same hair. It wasn't hard to do. Once you were the only Esther Vaughan, but now I am Esther, too.

You thought that you could change your name, that you could simply disappear. That you could pay me to go. How naive.

You were always her favorite, but if I'm you, then maybe she'll love me, too.

All my love,

EV

Alex

All the way there, I run, my feet hammering against concrete, though I'm completely anesthetized. I can't feel a thing.

I pound on the door when I arrive—once, twice, three times—watching as the metal portal shifts in its casing from the momentum of my blow. And then again and again.

She opens the door with a quizzical look on her face, and stands before me, her hair pulled back from her eyes, her gentle hands folded over her abdomen.

“Alex,” she says in a way that is both a question and a statement as I let myself inside and push the door to. “You look like you've seen a ghost. Everything all right?”

I can't reply. There are no words. I fight to catch my breath as Ingrid slips down the foyer and into the kitchen. I listen to the sound of her footsteps as she goes, unable to speak because I can't summon the breath to speak. I double over, dropping my sweaty hands to my knees, and then, when that doesn't do it, I squat down to the floor. “Let me get you some water,” Ingrid says from a distance, and before I can say a thing, I hear the sound of a kitchen faucet spilling water into the sink; the jarring noise of ice cubes plummeting from an ice-maker and into a glass; the seagulls outside, cawing in the distance over the sound of a truck that passes by on the abandoned street, the bobbing of tires as they yoyo over the quarried stone.
Breathe
, I tell myself.
Just breathe.

“I didn't know you were coming by today,” Ingrid calls from the kitchen. “You should have told me. I would have baked something. Banana bread, or...” And her voice carries on, but I can't hear a thing because I'm stuck on the librarian's revealing words—newsy and gossipy.
Ingrid Daube used to live there
, she had said to me as I stood there, mouth agape, in the old library.
That was her house. She was a Vaughan until her husband passed, you know, and then she returned to her maiden name of Daube. It's Dutch, I think, Daube. Of course, no one really makes mention of the fact that that was Ingrid's home. Such a tragedy what happened there. You do know about her little girl, Genevieve?
The librarian had continued to jabber, but by then I'd already begun to run, realizing that for all those times Pearl sat at the café window, staring out across the street, it was never Dr. Giles's home she had her eye on.

“I'm not hungry,” is all I manage to say. I force myself upright and begin to plod into the kitchen, one foot in front of the other, one hand dragging along the wall for balance. The room spins in circles around me. There's the strongest urge to drop my head between my legs and force the blood back up into my brain. I'm light-headed, dizzy, hardly able to breathe.

But Ingrid doesn't seem to notice.

I've taken less than four steps when the sink faucet turns off and the home becomes still, and that's when I hear the humming of a song, a morose song, a gloomy song, one I've heard Ingrid hum before.

A day or two ago I would have said I didn't know the song, but now I know: I'd recognize that lullaby anywhere.

“Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,” I say, my feet standing on the line between kitchen and foyer, eyeing Ingrid as she stands before me with my glass of water in her hands. I say the words, but I don't sing them, my voice trembling, though I try to mask the rippled effect with a plumb posture, like a scared cat arching my back so that I'll look big.

“You know that song?” Ingrid asks of me with a pleased smile, and when I nod my head in a nebbish, submissive sort of way—exhausted, scared and confused all at the same time—she confesses, “I used to sing that to my girls when they were young,” and without missing a beat, she trills aloud, “Go to sleep, my little baby,” and all I can see is Pearl clutching that old cloth doll to her chest, the gentle hip sway as she oscillated back and forth on the dilapidated floorboards of the old home. Ingrid's old home.

Before her eyes can reveal too much, Ingrid turns her back to me and continues the low drone of a somber little lullaby she used to sing while she rocked her baby girls to sleep in her arms. At the kitchen sink she goes through the motions of washing dishes as I stand slackly by, fighting still to catch my breath, completely unsure what to say or do. Do I say anything? Do I
do
anything? Do I tell Ingrid about the young woman squatting in her old, dilapidated home, the one who dug an empty casket out of Genevieve's grave and sings the same lullaby that Ingrid now sings?

Or do I turn and slip away, pretending not to see what's there before my eyes, the way the dots connect, the way the pieces correlate?

My folks gave me up
,
Pearl had said as we walked lazily around the street, but now I'm not so sure.

It's midday now, the sun at its highest point in the sky, the time of day it lets itself in uninvited through windows. A cold flurry of air sweeps around the side of Ingrid's house as Ingrid and I stand in the kitchen. Over the stream of water running from the kitchen sink I hear the front door squeak open against the weight of the wind, causing the walls of the home to whine.

“The door, Alex,” says Ingrid with a jolt. The terror takes over her eyes. “You closed the front door. You locked it.” But whether I did or didn't, I don't know.

As a scalloped dinner plate slips from Ingrid's wet hands and shatters into a million pieces on the kitchen floor, she screams. “Esther,” she says, staring over my shoulder as a low moan escapes from her throat and she beats a hasty retreat from the room, across the shards of glass. The water continues to pour from the faucet, rallying together a thousand polished bubbles in the sink, which threaten to overflow. Bubbles like a bubble bath. “Oh, no,” Ingrid moans, a hand groping for her throat. “No, no, no.”

I turn and there behind me stands Pearl.

“Alex. It's so nice of you to come,” she says, but never once does she look at me, for her eyes are lost on Ingrid.

“You look just like her,” bleats Ingrid, her voice far away as if she's underwater, as if she's drowning in the kitchen sink. “You look just like her. I almost thought you were...” As she steps forward and past me, she reaches out a gutless hand to stroke the rippled locks of ombré hair.

Pearl smiles the most pleased smile, like a child who's just made a brand-new friend. She runs a hand along the length of the bleached-out hair and offers an ostentatious curtsy so that the hemline of her checkered coat falls down to her knees. “I thought you'd like it,” she says, beaming. “She always was your favorite, after all. I thought you might like me more if I reminded you of her.”

And then she reaches for a knife.