Farthest House (14 page)

A door Willow dared to open slammed shut. “For someone who can’t be seen with me, you sure visit a lot.”

A draft passed through Mary’s eyes, and they seemed to empty even of the sickly blue. Willow drew back. Wolf eyes. She expected fangs and fur to appear. Afraid of enraging the eyes any more than she already had, she kept her voice low. “You don’t come to see me. You don’t even like being here. So why does perfect Mary visit
me
?”

Just as Willow thought Mary meant to use both hands to hit her again, Mary’s expression changed, her face softening, nearly crumbling into tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t hate you.” She paused, “Tell me about this painting.”

The flame of anger Willow had seen only the second before and the effort Mary took now to rein it in was frightening. Did Papa need to know that Mary had been the one at the window, and that she changed personalities as quickly as a pair of shoes?

Not wanting to see the colorless eyes again, playing along, acting as though nothing happened and talking about the painting, seemed safest. Papa would be back soon and Mary would go, hopefully for another five months.

“Pandora’s story?”
Who didn’t know that?
She’d make up a very quick version, but first, she ran her thumb and forefinger across her lips as though zipping Mary’s. “Pandora is the first version of the Eve myth.”

“You’re still on that?”

“You asked.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Pandora and Eve both wanted knowledge, a life bigger than what they had, something they weren’t supposed to want.”

Mary pointed to
White Mask. “
Like her?”

Willow hadn’t thought to include
White Mask,
and it surprised her that Mary did. “Yeah. Eve and Pandora were both supposedly living in Paradise; they were both called the first woman, and they were both accused of letting evil into the world. Though that evil had obviously already been created by someone. Had to be God, right?”

Mary watched her.

“If Eve and Pandora had really been in Paradise, they’d have been perfectly happy, with faces and knowledge. So whose paradise was it?” No reaction from Mary, and Willow considered what she’d just said. She was starting to sound like Mémé. “Anyway, Eve and Pandora are the same story. The End.”

“She’s a whore.”

Cold brushed across Willow’s shoulders, and she glanced out the room’s street-facing window and onto the empty street. What was taking Papa so long? She wanted to say,
It’s just a crappy painting, Mary, no one’s in competition with you,
but she didn’t dare. Mary frightened her. Even joking felt dangerous.

But Mary wasn’t always like this, not
this
mean, and Willow thought of the day she’d felt so much anger and upset that she destroyed Jeannie’s pictures, the pot handle like a knife in her hands. Mary was hurting; they matched. They both had weeping places, deep and unseen. But what could the source of Mary’s pain be? “Is your mom sick or something?”

Mary’s fingers drew quotation marks in the air. “She ‘
worries’
about me. ‘
Worries.’”
Her hands came down, and she looked hard at Willow. “Does your dad know you painted that?”

Willow shrugged. “He hasn’t seen it, but I know he doesn’t care what I paint.”

“Does he know you show me your back?”

From my place, I shuddered watching the two teenagers, remembering Julian and Tory at that age. Was there no end to the sources of pain?

Out Willow’s bedroom window Julian’s car rumbled back to the curb. Mary groaned. “What’s he doing back already?”

They watched him come around the car and start up the walk, each hand holding a brown paper sack twisted around what had to be the neck of a bottle.

“Alcoholic,” Mary said.

“You woke him up last night.”

“Quick, show me your back.”

“No.”

“Turn around,” Mary hissed, and then louder when Willow didn’t move. “I said, ‘turn around.’”

“Leave,” Willow managed. “Don’t ever come back.”

Using the same quick and angry motion she used earlier, Mary slammed the heels of her hands, but this time into the canvas. The canvas slid up and off. She looked at the wet paint on her hands and lifted them to her face, streaking the ghostly paint down her cheeks, across her forehead and drawing a wide circle around her mouth. “You’ll be sorry when I tell everyone about you. Your senior year is going to be hell.”

Willow could only gape at Mary’s face, but Friar stood, his ears back. He gave a sharp rap.

“That stupid dog,” Mary said, “will be dead before the summer is over. Just wait.”

17

The first day of Willow’s senior year, a math instructor scratched geometry problems on the blackboard, while Derrick Crat, sitting several desks ahead of Willow, kept turning to look at her. She ignored him, too, and looked at the bank of windows. An oak tree swayed in the breeze and rained fall leaves. She’d spent the previous week sitting on the back stoop at home, watching leaves just like these drop onto the mound of Friar’s grave.

She’d painted late and let Friar out the back door, slamming it quickly against the cloud of moths orbiting the outside light. Through the door’s smallish window, she watched him trot out of the circle of light, and then exhausted, she sat down at the kitchen table to wait. When she woke, two hours had passed. She opened the door, but Friar wasn’t there. She called. He didn’t come. She stepped out and listened. Nothing but the screech and flutters of night insects and farther away a car on Dodge Street. Friar wasn’t digging at a molehill or his feet padding over the weedy yard toward her. She moved off the steps, and then slower from the light into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust to the night. Only then did she hear the barely audible panting. At the fence, Friar lay on his side. She dropped to her knees, stroked his head, his neck, her fingers going deep into his neck fur. “What is it, boy? What’s wrong?”

In the classroom, Derrick Crat paid no more attention to the instructor than Willow did. Each time he turned, she felt the prick of invasion. Was he waiting for her to turn scarlet with embarrassment? Did he think he could still make her pull her hand up into her sleeve?

She’d left Friar in his distress and run back inside to shake Julian awake. “Come on! It’s Friar!” Julian’s fumbling for his worn jeans on the floor, trying to get them on while still under the blanket, wasting precious seconds, angered her. Did he think the sight of his skinny legs, or something hinting of walnuts beneath his holey briefs, in a dark room, mattered now?

“Calm down,” he growled, “I’m coming.”

Outside she continued rushing him, staying hard at his elbow though her heart raced yards ahead. Friar hadn’t moved, but now his one exposed eye stared lifelessly at the night sky. Julian knelt, rolled the dog to his back, and pressed a palm over Friar’s heart, an ear to his mouth. He rocked from his knees back onto his heels. “He’s gone.”

“He can’t be. He was alive.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know he’s still alive. We have to take him to a vet.”

“Willow, it’s too late.”

“You just don’t want to take him in. Please!”

“There’s nothing to be done. He’s dead.”

Through tears she glared at Julian. Maybe Friar was dead, but Papa hadn’t done anything to help. “Go back to bed.”

“I’m not leaving you out here. Come in, we’ll deal with this in the morning.”

“This? You mean Friar being dead? This?” She was on her knees, stroking Friar’s long body.

Julian tried several times more to coax Willow into the house, but she wouldn’t listen to him. He moved to sit on the back stoop. As the stars drifted overhead, Willow, still in tears, stretched out alongside Friar.

Derrick was still glancing back, causing those nearest him to glance back as well. Even the instructor noticed: “Mr. Crat, can I have your attention, please.”

She woke beside Friar’s body, thin streams of mauve and purple colored the eastern sky in weeping strokes. Ants walked in her hair, mosquitoes marked her arms in bumpy red seams, and Friar lay stiff. A few yards away, fully dressed, Julian worked with a shovel. She sat up and shuddered, her lungs quivering as if she’d continued sobbing in her sleep. She forced herself up from the dewy weeds. “Mary killed him.”

Julian stopped and leaned on his shovel, “Mary who?”

“Mary Wolfe. She said he’d be dead before school starts. School starts next week.”

He dug. “When did she threaten that?”

“Remember the night in May? She was the one pounding on the window.”

“May? Three months ago? That’s a long time. You can’t start pointing fingers without any proof.” He shoved the tip of the shovel into the dirt and used his foot and weight to force the blade deep. His hair, too long, swept against his cheeks.

Willow brushed a black ant off her arm. “Who says that? That they’re going to kill your dog? Now, he’s dead. We have to take him to a vet and have an autopsy.”

“What exactly did she say?”

“I don’t know exactly. Quit digging. That’s what she meant.”

Julian lifted another shovelful of dirt and dumped it on the ring growing around the grave rim. “I know how much you loved him. I did too, but he was old.”

“Can we just take him to a vet?”

“You’re going to have to face the facts.”

“Can we?”

He leaned on the shovel again. “We’ve had him seven years. Mom had him five or six before that. He was an old dog.”

Her body was taut with anger. Hadn’t Friar held them together, been the good spirit in the house, kept them from shattering like dropped bottles? Hadn’t he loved her, never seeing her as too tall, or too weird, or needing to be fixed? “Mary killed him!”

The cresting sun struck the oak tree, throwing shadow over them and the house. “Don’t go looking for trouble,” Julian said. “You don’t have any proof. This is over here.”

She swiped at tears. Friar never counted wine bottles, never wondered why Papa’s days were spent sitting at the kitchen table. “I can’t believe you. Mary killed him, and you won’t even take him in.”

“I said, ‘No.’”

Her lungs grabbed air. “Red would. He’d do something!”

Julian looked up. No anger in his eyes, only hurt. Exactly what Willow wanted. She wasn’t finished. “You don’t want to spend the money. You’ve always got it for cigarettes and wine. If you’re that broke, get a job.” She turned and ran for the house and her room.

By the time she could force herself back outside, opening and closing the door as quietly as possible, Friar was curled in his grave. Julian sat back on the stoop waiting for her.

“Please,” she tried again. Anger and loss were cold hands around her throat.

Julian’s fatigue, his shame at not being able to grant Willow her wish, and his own grief over the loss of Friar, all angered him. “You don’t have any proof. Why would Mary care about your dog?” His voice was near shouting. “Why would she go through plotting and then killing him? Stop being stupid. He lived a long life, and he died.”

“He should have lived longer.”

Julian closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his expression had softened. “I know. It’s never long enough.”

His mind had clearly gone back years to Jeannie’s death, and Willow wondered how he expected her to forget Friar and move on in one night when he couldn’t after so long.

He walked to where Friar’s body waited. “You want to do anything more here?”

“You can’t just shovel dirt on him.”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

She started back for the house, thinking to grab a towel for a shroud, maybe even Mother Moses. Why not bury the blanket and its fictionalized story of hope? She wanted no more to do with fantasy and pretending, and Friar had been with the crocheting all his life.

The newspapers running along the front-room wall caught her attention. She took up a thick wad from the most recent stack, papers still white rather than urine-yellow, and hopefully, the ones Papa cared most about. At the back door, she stopped, turned back, and filled her arms with all she could carry. Just let him object.

Julian frowned, embarrassed by the statement and angry over the volume he was losing, but he wouldn’t tell her to get something from her own life. He wiped sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve. “We’re goin’ need a bigger hole.”

Lame.
She wouldn’t smile. She dropped to her knees and tried reaching in to wrap papers around Friar, but she lacked the strength in her right arm to brace herself while she tried to lift his rump with the left. She switched arms, no better, and for a fleeting second she realized how little the difference was between the two. Without measuring, could people even tell? But Friar was dead, and then, Papa was kneeling beside her, taking the newspapers, quilt-thick handfuls, reaching in and wrapping them around the edges of Friar’s body, lifting Friar’s stiff legs, taking extra care to wrap his head, tucking out of sight the long belly hairs, working carefully, filling even the corners of the grave, as if packing frail china for a long journey.

Derrick had turned, again. Willow felt jerked from her memories and then wondered if Derrick knew anything about Friar’s death? She doubted it. He was too much the center-stage showoff to bother going out after dark to help Mary poison a dog. And Mary wouldn’t have told him what she’d done. He’d never understand why she cared enough to bother. When Derrick smiled again, Willow made a gawking face back, as if to ask,
what?

That evening, knocking at the door brought her from her bedroom. Television lights flickered over Julian who snored on the sofa, the gloaming across his face making his chin sharp and jutting, his neck ropy. She was still angry at him, but as each additional day passed, she was more certain that Mary killed Friar. She didn’t need a vet to say so.

The knocking continued. She hurried for the door. This wasn’t Mary; she wouldn’t dare. Besides, Mary preferred slinking in windows to walking through doors.

The instant Willow opened the door she wanted to slam it shut again. Shock and panic washed hot and quick over her face.

Derrick Crat smiled, and his eyes looked straight into hers. “How you doing? I thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to take a ride.”

Her knees trembled. He had dark eyes, not brown, not slate exactly. Dark. She swallowed. “In your car?”

“I’m sure I’m the last guy you ever expected to see, but you’ll give me a chance. Won’t you?”

She didn’t miss the fact that he waited for near darkness, but he at least parked at her curb. He shoved his hands into his pockets, something Papa once did. Innocent. Boyish. She thought of sweater cuffs.

“We won’t stay out late,” he said. “I’ve got curfew.”

She considered how there might be legitimate reasons for his coming late: the football team often practiced late, then he had to shower, go home, have dinner, maybe he even did some homework. His proposal still scared her, and she had no intention of going, but wasn’t something as surreal as Derrick standing on her doorstep exactly what she’d been waiting for? She didn’t want to tell him to leave, and she couldn’t ask him in with their sorry lives on full display, and Papa like a dead man on the sofa.

“Just a few minutes?” There was the same loose, sloppy smile from class.

Suppose the world was finally opening a door for her, and she didn’t walk in because she was scared? When
was
she going to be more than a stupid static duckling with one foot in the air? When
was
she going to jump into her face, as
White Mask
needed to do? The first leap was the worst. That one you wanted over ASAP. She looked down at the hole in her cut offs and the long ragged threads from the unhemmed bottoms.

“It’s just a car ride. We won’t go in any place people will see you.”

No they wouldn’t.
Derrick Crat wasn’t taking Willow Starmore any place public because Mary might find out and go berserk. Seeing them together, though, was exactly the punishment Mary deserved for killing Friar. Behind Willow, Julian continued his snoring. He still refused to even discuss Friar’s death, and he would never admit he was wrong about Mary. “Sure,” she heard herself say.

The click of his car engine and then the hum made her marvel. She was in an entirely new space. The leather bucket seats were warm, and his sunglasses swung from the rear-view mirror. Casey Kasem introduced a song on the radio. With the windows down, they drove slowly, the dash lights layering a soft wash over Derrick’s face. He fumbled at conversation, and she felt herself relaxing. The song ended, and Kasem’s melodic voice announced it was the first anniversary of Elvis’s death. “Seventy-five thousand flocked to Graceland the first night,” he said. “The roads were a traffic jam for miles, forcing the Presley family to close the gates.”

Derrick laughed, “Who the hell cares about that old, dead fart?”

“My dog died.” She watched him, but there was no change in his expression. “Friar,” she said.