The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (3 page)

Chapter 4

A
week later, Hallie appeared at the
Barrettos’ door. She hesitated for a full minute before she dared to knock. When Gus’s aunt opened it halfway, Hallie took a step backward and picked up the gifts she’d brought. In one hand she carried a thick book, holding it against her chest like a Bible salesman; in the other, a swollen plastic bag secured with a wire tie. Two minnows swam inside it. Fatima Barretto let out a long exhalation. She looked past the girl suspiciously. “So where’s your little boyfriend—hiding in the bushes again?”

“Neil’s not here—and he
isn’t
my boyfriend,” Hallie said, though she wasn’t quite sure she was right on either count. Neil still spent most of his free time skulking around the house on Loop Street, waiting for the Gus he once knew to come out and play. And since he had started sitting with Hallie on the bus almost every day, she’d heard the word
boyfriend
whispered more than once.

At first, Neil just wanted to talk about Gus, but one afternoon right before they reached her stop, he asked if she’d ever kissed a boy. When she squinched up her nose and replied, “Of course not,” Neil smiled. “Me neither. Never kissed a girl, I mean. But when I do, it’s gonna be you.” Hallie hadn’t contradicted him. She wondered if that made him her boyfriend.

Mrs. Barretto continued to bar the doorway, but Hallie sensed an opening.

“Nick sent me,” she said, though she hadn’t exactly told Nick where she was going. She held the book and the fish in the air. “Follow-up treatment.”

Mrs. Barretto tilted her head to read the title of the book. “
David Copperfield
? How’s that supposed to help my nephew?” she asked, but she opened the screen door and let Hallie pass.

“It’s about an orphan,” Hallie said, speaking with more certainty than she felt.

“Well, that should cheer him up.” Mrs. Barretto took in the scraggly fish. “And what are those—minnows? I know you mean well, Hallie—
everyone
means well. But those fish belong in the tide pools, and the last thing Gustavo needs is a story about an orphan.”

“Not just any orphan,” Hallie replied. “An orphan who becomes the hero of his own story.”

Mrs. Barretto sighed. “We were so happy when Gustavo spoke to Nick on Saturday. But that was it. He hasn’t said a word since.”

Hallie bristled at the hint of criticism toward her father. “That was just part one of the treatment.”

“I see. And you’re part two?” Fatima folded her arms across her chest, as if she wished she’d never opened the door. “You and your orphan book?”

“Yup.” Hallie took in Fatima’s collection of statues. Dolorous replicas of the Virgin Mary were everywhere, their blue ceramic cloaks grayed by dust, their eyes glazed. Though he wasn’t home, Hallie could smell Manny’s scent—a mixture of drugstore cologne, the sea, and pure meanness. For the first time, she wondered if Mrs. Barretto was right; maybe she shouldn’t have come. But she banished the thought by sitting up extra straight on the couch and smiling like a prim visitor, the book resting on her lap like a lady’s purse.

Mrs. Barretto emitted a long sigh, then relented. “Gustavo!” she hollered as if the house were a many-winged mansion instead of a winterized five-room cottage. The name reverberated, as did the silence that followed.

F
atima Barretto knocked on his bedroom
door. “Dr. Nick’s daughter is here to see you. It looks like she brought you a—a
present
.” Again, she shook her head disdainfully at the common minnows. Then she returned to the living room.

“Maybe he’s sleeping,” Hallie said, when Gus still hadn’t come out after several, long uncomfortable moments. “I’ll come back some other time.”

But before she could get away, Gus appeared in the hallway, looking as if he’d just woken up from a nap. His eyes were dark and glistening, but they clearly weren’t crazy. Hallie quickly decided that Gus Silva was just sad—more sad than anyone she’d ever seen. He was so sad he couldn’t utter a single word. Her heart clenched.

Mrs. Barretto cleared her throat. “Hallie’s come to, um,
read to you
, Gustavo.” She spoke loudly, as if Gus wasn’t only mute but deaf, too. From the way she emphasized the words, Hallie sensed that reading—especially the passive act of being read to, had never been Gus’s favorite activity.

Mrs. Barretto picked up the book, and skimmed a few pages. “I was in high school before I even heard of Dickens. Don’t you have something more appropriate?”

Hallie grimaced, as she always did when anyone referred to her precociousness. “This is one of his books for children,” she said as Gus took a seat opposite her.

Mrs. Barretto tested its heft and squinted at the small print inside. “Doesn’t look like a kids’ book to me.”

Gus, however, was focused on the fish.

“Nick took me to Herring Cove this morning,” Hallie explained. “This big one here—I named him after Johnny Kollel because he’s a bully. And the little one is Silver because—well, just because I thought it was pretty. Now that she’s yours, I guess that makes her Silver Silva.”

Gus blinked at her with his sorrowful eyes.

“How about I get you a snack, then I’ll leave you and your pet fish alone,” Mrs. Barretto offered. “That okay with you, Gustavo?”

Hallie was glad his aunt didn’t call him Voodoo like people in town did. And yet even as she denied the power of his spell, she felt it.

Mrs. Barretto set down a platter of
trutas
and two glasses of milk in mismatched tumblers. She’d also retrieved an old fishbowl for Johnny and Silver. It was milky and stained with a ring of algae.

Though Hallie had never liked the sweet potato pastries, she took a polite nibble. In spite of the sugar and spices, it still tasted like a vegetable to her, and it had to be at least a week old. (Even her father, who adored
trutas
, said they were only good the first day.) “Mmm . . . thank you,” she said, in the spirit of Nick’s
cortesia
. The word meant “courtesy,” but when Nick pronounced it in Portuguese, he was giving a name to his personal religion: a profound respect for the unknowable spirit in everyone he met.

When Gus’s aunt left the room, Hallie discreetly spit her cookie into a napkin. Then she poured the two fish into the cloudy bowl, pulled a small canister of fish food from her pocket, and set it beside Gus. “They’re yours now. If you don’t take care of them, they’ll die.”

Gus watched everything she did intently, but made no response. Hallie decided there was something comforting in being with a mute. She could say whatever she wanted—or she could just relax and say nothing at all. As for Gus, he seemed to be at ease with his own silence. He didn’t squirm when spoken to, nor did he look away. If he could speak, he might say that he didn’t want to spend a sun-dappled afternoon listening to a girl he didn’t know very well read a nineteenth-century novel.

But he neither complained nor teased Hallie when she opened the heavy book crammed with tiny print and filled the living room with David Copperfield’s story. Hallie stood when she read, as if it were a performance; her voice rose in the dramatic parts, and changed for each character.

When she peeked obliquely at Gus, he was holding the plate of stale
trutas
on his lap, clearly absorbed in the tale. Hallie smiled and went on reading. For at least a little while, it looked as if he’d forgotten to be sad. She read for over an hour before she suddenly stopped in the middle of a critical scene and slammed the book shut.

Gus blinked like he’d just awoken from a dream, almost dropping the plate of pastries on the rug.

“I’ll have the bus drop me here on Monday so we can read some more,” Hallie said. Knowing there would be no response, she didn’t bother with goodbye. “Thanks again for the
trutas
, Mrs. Barretto,” she sang out as the screen door slammed, its elbow hinge long broken.

As she stepped into the garden, Neil Gallagher jumped up from under the same scrawny bush where the two had hidden the week before.

“What are
you
doing here?” Hallie said in a harsh whisper. She looked back at the house to make sure Gus’s aunt wasn’t watching them. “If Mrs. Barretto thinks you’re following me, she’ll never let me back in the house again.”

“Old
witch
,” Neil muttered. “She got mad just because I hooked her ripped screen with my fishing pole. Then when I broke a window in Manny’s stupid shed with a ball, she really freaked.” After retrieving the sporting equipment he had been using to try to lure Gus outside—this time a catcher’s mitt, a ball and two bats, he hobbled after Hallie. “Wait up! I got a charley horse waiting under that bush so long. Did Gus talk to you?”

Hallie didn’t stop or answer his question, but she slowed down and let him catch up. “You should sit down and massage that leg if you want the cramp to go away.”

“Oh, so you’re a doctor now?” Though he was still limping, Neil refused to slow down.

“Not yet, but I’m Nick’s number-one assistant.”

“Well,
la-di-da.
”

Hallie laughed out loud. It sounded like something Aunt Del would say—not a boy with a charley horse, wearing a baseball cap backwards.

“
So what did you do in there?” he repeated, oblivious to her laughter. “And why did you bring that huge
book
?”

Hallie ignored his questions. After a peaceful hour with the mute Gus, she had already become used to speaking only when she felt like it. Neil skipped ahead of her with his sore leg and forced her to look at him. “Well?” His face was so expectant that she giggled again.

“What’s so funny? Did Gus say when he’s coming back to school?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Hallie admitted. They had reached the road where she turned off, so she stopped briefly. “Not
yet.
”

Hallie resumed walking, clearly done with their conversation.

“But he will, right, Hal?” he yelled, standing on the corner of his street, a wide smile stretching his freckled cheeks. “He’s gonna talk just like he used to!”

Hallie continued in silence a few more yards. Then she turned back, wearing a smile that matched Neil’s. “Yes, he will,” she said into the bright wind that came off the bay. She didn’t know how she could be so sure, but she was.

That night, Hallie was relieved when Linda Soares, the town librarian who’d spent years trying to impress Nick with her low-cut shirts and book recommendations, joined them for dinner. Hallie had rehearsed how she would tell Nick what she’d done, and she hoped the presence of a guest might soften his reaction.

She finally blurted it out in the middle of dessert.

Nick pushed back his plate. “Let me get this straight. You
lied
to me about going to Felicia’s,” he said sternly, seeming to forget that anyone else was there. “Then you rode your bike all the way to Loop Street, and showed up at the house of a grieving family with a book and two fish?”

“
You
went there.”

“I’m a doctor. It’s my job to help people.”

“From what I heard, you had a five-hour staring contest with the kid,” Wolf snorted. “If that’s what you call medical treatment, I prefer Hallie’s idea.”

Nick ignored him. “I don’t believe in all that nonsense about
feitiço
and voodoo, but Gus Silva is deeply troubled, Hallie.”

“When I got to the door, I wanted to turn around and go back so bad, but the water from the plastic bag was starting to leak, and I knew the fish would never survive the trip back. And—”

“And when you decide to do something, you don’t let anything stop you—just like your mother. There are going to be consequences for this one, though, Hallie.”

“I’m sorry, Nick, but—”

“But nothing. You lied to me and you went somewhere you had no right to be. I can’t believe Fatima Barretto even let you in, or that Gus was willing to see you.”

“I thought my fish were going to die before he came out, but he finally did.” Though she knew she was in trouble, Hallie couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.

“And he sat there listening to you reading Dickens?” Linda asked. “That’s pretty heavy going for a nine-year-old—in the best of circumstances.”

“Didn’t take his eyes off me for a whole hour.”

Though Nick was listening intently, he said nothing. When he got up to clear the table, the tension was palpable. Wolf grumbled something and slipped upstairs; and Linda, who suddenly remembered she had something to do, offered to pick up her pie pan the next day.

Hallie and Nick dried and put away the dishes in strained silence.

“I suppose you promised you’d go back?” Nick finally said.

“Well, I hoped . . . I mean, if it’s okay with you. Please?”

Nick pulled out a chair at the table, scraping the floor, and then sat down. “I’ll consider it—with certain conditions, of course,” he said.

Sensing her victory, Hallie threw her arms around his neck, but her father held her at arms’s length.

“I said I’d
consider
it,” he repeated. “But first there’s the matter of your punishment. That sleepover you planned with Felicia for the weekend? Consider it canceled.”

T
he following Monday, Hallie went to
the Barrettos’, where she would return every day for the next three weeks including Saturdays and Sundays. Neil Gallagher was always somewhere nearby, either caught in an inhospitable nest of cat briars and Japanese honeysuckle, spying from his perch high in the crabapple tree, or sitting among the old traps and fishing lures in Manny’s disheveled shed. Sometimes, when he got tired of hiding from Fatima, he came out and tossed a ball in the air outside the window, singing the theme songs to Gus’s favorite TV shows.

Then, one afternoon, just after they’d entered their fourth week, she noticed Gus taking an interest in the world around him. She slipped into the kitchen for a glass of water, and when she returned, he was standing in the window, shadowed by the dusty gold drapes. Outside, Neil threw a ball higher and higher, as if aiming at the sun while Gus followed its bright trajectory. When Neil caught it, Gus smiled for the first time.