Farthest House (13 page)

16

Five months passed in which Mary didn’t visit Willow, though she often visited Sister Dominic Agnes. The three were caught in a web, and when the aging nun and Mary fought against the strings trapping them, the strings on Willow’s side of the web tightened. I had only to look across to see Sister Dominic Agnes, ever thinner and paler and more bent at her kneeler, and the black chain hanging heavily above her. When the first graders left in the afternoon, she turned off the lights, lowered herself, and prayed. Weekends too, in the dark, the room had the air of a chapel. Mary slipped into the somber space feeling fitted to the dark and welcome under the funeral chain velvet with dust. They prayed for Mary’s vocation, that she could come to accept God’s call, and they talked of the days when the paper chain had been new and people paraded in and out to see it, and the two of them had felt most alive.

Winter moved into spring. Though Mary hadn’t visited Willow recently, the memory of the last time, the circling, chiseling in of pain, self-doubt, and shame, continued dragging an icy finger over Willow’s back. On the night of Spring Prom, she tried again to fill the hours with painting, though finding that deeper space where time passed with no awareness was nearly impossible. Her mind sagged with worry and longing. Mary, and nearly everyone else she knew, had dates and danced in beautiful spaghetti-strapped gowns.

After eleven, she put down her brushes and sat on the bed to study the pale canvas. With one arm around Friar, she asked him what he thought. The picture she struggled to copy was
Pandora,
by the French painter Lefebvre. She’d been working on the painting in her free time for over a week, and one of Pandora’s legs still looked seriously off kilter. On another night, she might have scraped off some of the paint and worked another two or three hours, but the thought of Mary possibly showing up, as she had after the Christmas Prom, crowding the room with her odors of dancing and drinking, filled Willow with dread and shame.

The best tactic was to turn out the light and go to bed. If Mary came, she’d see the dark window and leave. Sweeping her brushes back and forth through turpentine, Willow kept one eye on the painting. The first-woman of the Greek’s definitely looked tipsy and ghostly. The oils and acrylics Papa brought from Farthest House were gone. A tiny bit of white remained, smidgeons of a couple of colors, but most tubes were so flat they looked sucked dry. Still others were rolled up as tightly as wire bands around Spam keys. She kept them, needing them the way Julian needed his newspapers. On her saddest days, she picked them up, felt their pinched and squeezed hard surfaces, read their exotic names, and imagined holding full tubes.

“Care only to work,” Mémé had said, and Willow wouldn’t let the lack of optimal painting supplies keep her from that.

Their small house felt large and empty as she and Friar walked past Papa’s doorway and through the kitchen to where she opened the door, and he went out to lift his leg on the big tree in their yard. When he finished, she locked the back door, something Papa never bothered to do. She locked the front door, as well, and turned out the room’s light, watching how the newspapers seemed to hold illumination a second longer. Passing Julian’s room again, she paused to look in. He lay shirtless in his worn jeans and atop his blankets, his bottom ribs visible, his face in the dark, stony and smudged in shadows, and his hair graying and too long falling back from his sharp-edged face. She’d already begun to think of him as disappearing, and now in the dim light, he looked half erased. Creditors called daily, at least they had before the telephone was shut off, and Papa was anxious about everything.

She pulled herself away and hurried on. She wasn’t still a child. She could take care of things. She’d applied for a job at the nearest art store, right on the number 2 bus route, and if they hired her, she could help with groceries. More importantly, she’d be aware of every sale, every damaged tube of paint headed for the trash, and she’d have an employee discount. If only they hired her, she’d never be out of paint again.

In her room, close to Mother Moses, she double-checked the locks on both her windows, and as Friar finished circling on the bed and dropped rump-first with a sigh, she turned off the light and crawled in. Friar snored soon enough, but she tossed, rolling right and left, and finally staring up at the ceiling. She acted horrible the night of the Christmas Prom, rolling over like a dog and exposing herself, so needy she let Mary go on and on with her emotional mauling while snow melted off Mary’s shoes and onto the floor.

The shameful memory made Willow take up her pillow and move to the floor, though she couldn’t explain why. Friar stepped off the bed, joined her there, and she wrapped her right arm around his neck.

Even half expecting it, the tapping on her window made her jump. She looked at the clock: 12:52. Mary. Why always on nights when the rest of her group surely lied about spending the night at friends’ houses and were coupled up four to a bed in motel rooms? Was that it? Was Mary afraid of those situations? The drinking and the sex? More afraid than walking in the dark in the middle of the night? When a car could stop, pull her inside, and no one would see it happen?

The tapping turned to knocking and finally pounding. Willow kept hold of Friar, keeping him quiet and on the floor, while she prayed the banging would stop before it woke Papa. The noise only increased, and as Mary pressed against the window, her dark silhouette grew.

Willow held her breath, not hearing Julian’s bare footfalls over the pounding. She noticed him only when he appeared at the door of her room. Too late to rush back into bed. She shut her eyes tight, clenched her teeth and feigned sleep. When Friar pulled free to go to Julian, she had to let him go.

The pounding stopped. The arms of the shadow rose and cupped its shadowed mouth. “Fucking bitch!”

Willow’s heart seized. The name-calling would hurt Papa, make him worry. Here was another something hurled at him: her unpopularity. Something he couldn’t fix, only carry.

“Fucking bitch!” Mary screamed again, “I’ve always hated you.”

The window cleared, and the soft glow from the nearby streetlight settled again on the glass. A June bug, caught between the window and the screen, whirled and buzzed in distress, and still Julian lingered, listening to the insect, making sure the figure at the window wasn’t returning, and watching his teenage daughter curled on the floor. He hadn’t seen her there in years. Friar sat on his haunches staring up at him, and he petted the dog’s head. He didn’t know how to help Willow. “Go on,” he whispered. “Stay with her.”

As I watched the boy I helped raise, grown now into a beautiful man, drink from a bottle in his room, I thought of my instructions to Tory. “Sip, sip,” I said. “Forget this.”

The following forenoon, Willow stood at the kitchen sink, holes under the arms of her old T-shirt and in the knees of her sweatpants. Using her fingernail, she scratched at the dried on grit in a soup bowl. Neither she, nor Julian, cared much about food: Campbell’s soup still kept them alive. Willow even preferred painting while hungry. She was convinced that on an empty stomach she could work for more hours without tiring and that hunger kept her mind sharp. An emaciated model with large eyes, so like a victim in a concentration camp, was all the rage. Twiggy had even recently recorded her first album.

At the table behind Willow, Julian ground out the stub of his cigarette. “I’m going to pick up a few things.”

She rinsed the bowl in her hand. Cigarettes and wine, there was always money for those. She was out of sanitary pads and pinned washcloths to her underwear. She washed them out at night and spread the stained squares under her bed to dry. Papa hadn’t mentioned the midnight incident, hadn’t asked how school was going or if she had any friends, hadn’t said, “We’re showing ’em.” He smoked more than usual that morning, snapped his newspapers with unnecessary force, and avoided looking at her. She was thankful; she couldn’t have explained Mary to him. She didn’t understand Mary herself.

By the time the taillights of his rusted Ford rounded the corner at the end of the block, Mary crossed the porch and slipped through the unlocked door. “Why didn’t you let me in last night?”

Willow turned. Beautiful Mary. Less than twelve hours earlier, Willow wanted nothing to do with her, but in the hours since, she’d heard Mary scream “bitch” over and over and felt Papa’s gloom. Mary with her bright hair, eyes, and clothes, represented the good stuff: money, beauty, and popularity. How could Willow turn her back on that, cutting off her only possible lifeline to the world where teenagers lived in the safety of numbers, never alone like herself? What she and Mary shared was crazy and stupidly painful, and yet, here Mary was again, the second time in hours, wanting something. Friendship? She’d called Willow a “fucking bitch,” but did she even remember? Had she been drunk? Was she visiting now, in daylight, to apologize?

“Why didn’t I let you in?” Willow repeated the question, as if she’d been trying to remember the reason. “I wasn’t home. A couple of us without dates had a sleep over.”

“Liar.” She started for Willow’s room, the long ties of her white espadrilles winding up her ankles, her pink shorts and sleeveless pink silk blouse with its mandarin collar making Willow vow that once out of high school and away, she’d copy Mary’s style: every blouse and sweater. She might even learn to stroke her neck like Mary, as though absent-mindedly petting some fine, porcelain thing.

The bedroom was thick with heat and humidity, and the heaviness added to its over-crowding. The large easel, the table holding art supplies, her bed, the boxes of books, and the dresser all looked pathetic to Willow. Adding to the muddle was the wallpaper with its close and untidy mass of static and discoloring ducks.

Standing in front of the easel, Mary’s gaze went from the Pandora painting to
White Mask
leaning against the wall and back to Pandora. “You’re just like everyone else.”

The picture looked no better to Willow than it had the night before, and she considered how she’d have to start at the hip and paint the entire leg over again, maybe start as high as the waist.

“Sex is the only thing people think about,” Mary said.

“That’s not sex. Haven’t you ever looked in an art book?”

“She’s naked under that see-through…, whatever.”

Mary’s eyes were especially pale and cold, winter blue and titanium white. Willow wanted to blame the pallid color on the sunlight coming through the windows.

“My parents,” Mary said, “would kill me if I painted something like that.”

Mary was jealous, and Willow hoped the pride she felt wasn’t spreading over her face. Her art was her single comeuppance. It was little in comparison to Mary’s beauty, to the silk blouses, her friends, and the dances. But it was something. “Why’d you come over last night? Not enough compliments on your prom dress?”

“I still want that painting.” She pointed to
White Mask
. “You’ve had it long enough.”

“That’s not why you came. At least, it’s not the whole reason.”

Mary turned, lifting both hands and slamming the heels into Willow’s chest, sending her stumbling backwards, just missing Friar, nearly catching herself with an arm on the bed but not, feeling like Mo and Curly and Larry in a slapstick routine, then landing on her behind with a plop and an elbow smacking the floor. Surprised by the duration of her fall and how ungracefully she’d gone down, she started to laugh. “You are cra-Azy!”

Friar rose, his eyes sharp as he gave one quick bark in Mary’s direction.

“That dog hates me,” she said. “Get rid of him.”

Willow’s palms dampened, “What?”

Mary’s arms swung, motioning around the room. “At least I have a life. I don’t spend it in this hovel, painting naked women.”

Willow might still have laughed. She’d survived the dumbest fall ever, and Mary couldn’t paint at all. She wanted to tell Mary to calm down, but Mary’s words also held a truth Willow couldn’t deny. Only a single year of high school remained, which meant she was about to lose something she’d not yet tasted. For three years she’d been telling herself, “Next year,” but like the ducks, she never gained an inch of ground. Now, with her junior year ending,
next year
was her last chance.

Rising from the floor she had a daring thought. “Maybe, we could,” she took a deep breath, “go out some night. A double date. You and Derrick, and me with one of his friends.”

Mary faced the painting, but Willow’s request made her pivot slowly again, her brows pinching. “You’re kidding, right?”