From the kitchen window that morning, I watched Frankie slip into the Studebaker, and, like clockwork, the Wilsons’ door opened and the children poured out, followed by Ted and his briefcase. My girls left and convened with the Wilson children in the street, leaving us behind, as always. Though nothing was as always anymore.
I was bewildered. It was as though everything had only been a dream, a nightmare. But I had not been asleep. I hadn’t even closed my eyes. Was it possible that Johnny had held his tongue? Was it possible he was simply too young to understand what he’d seen? Was it possible that he had dismissed it like he might dismiss a playground taunt or the bogeyman under his bed?
Eva’s call came only moments after our families had departed. I dreaded what she would tell me.
“He didn’t say anything,” she said.
I felt the grip of anxiety on my neck and shoulders suddenly release. “What?” I asked.
“Johnny. He didn’t say anything to Ted. At least I don’t think he did.”
“How do you know?” I asked. Though I knew exactly how she knew. If Johnny had told Ted what he had seen Eva and me doing by the creek, we wouldn’t be speaking on the phone right now.
“Did you
talk
to Johnny?” I asked.
She was quiet for a long time. I could feel my heart pounding in my temples, in my shoulders, in my hand as I pressed the phone close to my head. Finally she said softly, “What would I say, Billie? How could I possibly explain?”
“Can I come over?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got a thousand things to do around the house.”
I felt my heart plummet.
“He won’t say anything,” I said, but it came out like a question.
“I don’t know,” she said, and hung up.
And so we didn’t go to each other that day; both of us were far too afraid now. Even if Johnny hadn’t told Ted, our secret didn’t belong to us anymore. It was an animal escaped from the zoo. It was a quiet tiger lurking in the backyard. A quiet, hungry tiger. It was best to stay inside. To hide.
The weekend came as all other weekends came. The children played together, jumping into the piles of leaves that Frankie and Ted had raked in our respective yards. Frankie and Ted had made an unspoken truce, though I knew Frankie wouldn’t be inviting Ted to come over anytime soon. A line had been drawn in the sand, and that line ran down our street.
Inside the house, I felt like a puppet, going through the motions of my life, the invisible strings attached to my hands, my feet, my head, dictating my every move: laundry, dishes, floors. Cookies for Monday’s bake sale. Rolling out pasta dough, bringing jars of tomatoes up from the basement. Putting a Band-Aid on Mouse’s scraped knee. Turning on the television to watch as I folded the warm, clean clothes.
I didn’t know what was happening inside the Wilsons’ house, but I did know I had been stuck inside my own for three days straight. I hadn’t felt the autumn air on my face. The house was like a sarcophagus; if I didn’t get out and take a walk soon, I might go crazy.
I knew that asking Eva to join me was dangerous, but normally we walked Calder nearly every night; wouldn’t Ted suspect something if I didn’t come by to get her? I couldn’t live like this. Something had to give. I needed to talk to her. I needed to see her and figure out what to do next.
It took nearly every ounce of courage I had left in my body to go to the Wilsons’ front door and knock. The children were playing kick the can in the street. I rushed past Donna and Sally, who were running toward the rusty can, giggling and pushing each other playfully. Mouse was hiding, and Chessy was running breathlessly a few houses down.
“Bam!” a voice said from above, startling me. I looked up through the barren branches of the giant elm in front of the house, and Johnny was pointing his Daisy rifle right at me. On any other day I would have scolded him, told him that you never, ever point a gun, even a BB gun, at someone. But I was speechless. He had a wild look in his eyes, one I recognized as his father’s, and his cheeks were flushed red. “I got you,” he hissed.
I scurried up onto the porch and knocked.
Eva came out with Calder already on her leash, and we descended the porch steps silently. But the entire walk down the street I could feel Johnny’s eyes and aim at our backs.
The sound of the children playing faded as we walked toward the creek. We didn’t touch each other, and we really didn’t speak. It was as though acknowledging what had happened on Halloween night would somehow make the horror of it real. I desperately wanted her to assure me that everything was going to be okay. That we would go ahead with our plans. That, if
anything,
Johnny’s discovery would hasten things. That Johnny knowing about us would only force us to expedite our departure. But we both knew that nothing was okay. That the tiger was lurking somewhere. It was only a matter of time before we turned a corner and were face-to-face with him.
By the time we got back to our street, the children were inside. It was quiet and cold outside. The cars slept in the driveways. It was peaceful. Strangely beautiful.
“Good night,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I nodded, trying not to cry. I must have known that this moment of peace would be our last, that everything was about to shatter, because I hesitated before going back inside my house. I felt it in my bones. I heard the tiger’s growl.
I
am haunted by my memories here. And so despite being exhausted from the flight, from the long drive to Gussy’s, I cannot sleep. Despite Gussy’s efforts to make me feel at home (the clean sheets, the cup of tea at my bedside, the warm bath she drew), I lie wide awake in Gussy’s guest room waiting for a slumber that will not come.
The room is dark save for the small yellow glow of a nightlight that shines from the guest bathroom. I press my hand to the window and feel the chill of autumn outside. At least it is warm in here; the heat comes on and shuts off intermittently, blowing in hot gusts across my face. She’s taken the Windsor chimes that normally hang above the bed so they won’t keep me awake, making it quiet in here. The only thing prohibiting sleep is my own thoughts: the cranking, buzzing machine of my own mind.
In the morning (if morning ever comes) we will go to the lake. Gussy called Effie, and she said they are all excited to see us. We’ll spend the day with them, maybe take a nice walk around the lake to look at the foliage, and then on Sunday Gussy and I will get in the car and drive to Boston to see Johnny. I am still mystified as to why Johnny has asked us to make this trip. Gussy said that he has just gotten out of rehab, that he is in the process of making amends. In my mind I see his list, categorized by year, perhaps.
1964: Billie Valentine
. But again, what would he have to apologize for? He did nothing wrong. He was a little boy, a child; we were the adults. Johnny was an innocent bystander, only a witness to everything that happened. He might even be considered a victim. Any decent therapist could tell him this. We, the grown-ups, were the perpetrators. We were the ones at fault.
I drift off sometime just before dawn, and I awaken as though someone has rung a bell in my ear. But now as I pull myself from the murky depths of a dream that is fading fast, I realize it is only Gussy’s radio playing VPR in the kitchen as she cooks soft-boiled eggs and bacon for my breakfast, as she brews a fresh pot of coffee and waits for me to join her at that big, empty kitchen table.
Today we will go to the lake, I think. We will gather fallen leaves and press them between the pages of heavy books with the children. And tomorrow, we will put coffee in a Thermos and grab a couple of bagels from that place in Quimby on our way to Boston. We will see Johnny and hear him out, let him say whatever it is he feels he needs to say. Let him offer me whatever relic it is he has to give.
I gather my robe around me and carefully make my way down the carpeted stairs. The walls are crowded with photos of our respective children: black-and-white school photos I know as well as my own wedding photo. And as I pass, I can barely return their gaze; I am that ashamed. They were only children.
The drive to Lake Gormlaith is like a drive back in time, Gussy’s Subaru, with its pine-scented freshener and newly vacuumed upholstery, some strange time machine. I sit in the passenger seat as Gussy navigates the familiar roads, her seat drawn close to the wheel and her hands gripping tightly in the same way about which we used to tease our own mother on the rare occasions when she got behind the wheel.
I have not been on this road in fifty years, but somehow, I anticipate every turn, nearly every bump. Memory is funny this way; you think you have forgotten some things, but the smallest reminder suddenly delivers the past back to you. A flood. A deluge. My heart is beating in the way that terrifies me as we get closer and closer to the lake. And then thankfully, just as I fear my heart might stop, Gussy pulls into the dirt lot at Hudson’s. “Effie asked if I could pick up some milk,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”
I try to imagine what there could possibly be inside that little convenience store, on those dusty shelves in the smudgy glass walk-in coolers, that would take away the growing sense that I’d made a big mistake in coming here. What would that box or bag or carton look like? How much would it cost?
“I’m fine,” I lie.
I sit in the idling car while Gussy makes her way inside the shop. Again, as I watch her, I see not her but our mother. Her posture, the curve of her spine. Even the back of her head, her carefully managed white curls, trick me.
Outside, the sky is a brilliant, almost alarming blue, the sun hanging like a blinding jewel nestled in its azure throat. Despite Gussy’s claims otherwise, her apologies, the foliage is spectacular.
Otherworldly
. The colors of the leaves and the combinations the forests make of them are impossible, the endless landscape like a child’s finger painting: a dream in crimson, violet, saffron. If I believed in God, I would see this as evidence of his existence. How else can you explain this kaleidoscope of colors?
Gussy hands me the carton of milk through my open window. “I got 2 percent,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe I should have gotten whole milk. For the children. Goodness, what do you think?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I say, thinking it is funny how Gussy, who is calm and collected during the most trying times, can worry herself into a tizzy over the smallest things. I, on the other hand, have always taken the small things in stride while the big picture finds me bumbling and fumbling.
“Ready?” she asks, sitting down, the door chiming its cheerful reminder to buckle up.
“As I’ll ever be, I suppose,” I say.
Three miles. Three miles that could be the network of my nerves, the very pathway made by my veins and arteries. This is how much this place is a part of me. It is my body. The breeze, my breath. This lake, as the lake comes into view, my blood. I start to feel nauseated as we round the bend where the boat access area and grassy beach appear. Unchanged. Almost preserved.
“Are you okay?” Gussy asks, reaching for my hand.
I nod, because the words are stuck somewhere inside that complicated knot of recollections. In the stones, the trees, the sinewy road before us.
“Are you sure?” she persists.
I realize I have been pressing my hand to my heart, an instinctive gesture I have adopted in the last several years. I am checking to make sure it hasn’t stopped, just as I used to press my ear against Francesca’s and Mouse’s chests when they slept. As I did near the end when Lou was dying. But my old heart bangs hard, reassuring me under my palm.
As we pull up to the camp, I see two children playing on the broad expanse of lawn, leaping into several mountains of raked leaves. For just a moment, my heart stutters and stumbles under my fingertips.
Sally,
I think.
And Donna?
But as we pull into the drive and they come running toward the car, their dark cheeks blushed pink, I am pulled to the surface again, though it takes a moment to catch my breath.
“Gussy!” the littlest one says, opening the door and climbing into the car and nestling into Gussy’s lap, throwing her arms around her neck. The older one, Zu-Zu, stands waiting patiently outside, shaking her head at her little sister, Paige, the one they call
Plum
.
How is it that these simple gestures, these nuances of the body, are passed on from one generation to the next? More so than complexion and eye color and slope of shoulder or nose, the gestures we inherit are the living ghosts. That is our mother shaking her head in this ten-year-old girl’s smiling disapproval. Here is a bit of seven-year-old Gussy in the nuzzling little girl who clings to the elderly version of Gussy now.
“Okay, okay,” Gussy says, finally. “Let Grammy out of the car,” and Plum obliges.
Effie is in the kitchen making pancakes at the same stove where I once stood, where Eva stood all those years ago. And the girls scurry into the breakfast nook in the same manner that our own children would. How little has changed, I think. How much is exactly the same, though I don’t know if this is comforting or unsettling. Effie wipes her hands on her apron and comes first to Gussy and then to me. A whisper of a thing she is; I can feel all her bones. It’s like hugging a tiny bird.
Effie’s hair is wound up into an enormous bun on top of that little head, secured with a pencil. She is the mobile librarian, Gussy says. Bringing books to families, to children.
We have a lot in common now
, I think. When she hugs me, I notice that despite her miniscule size, she’s got strong arms that squeeze purposefully.
“It’s so good to see you, Billie,” she says, smiling. “I can barely remember the last time. I must have been just a kid.”
I nod. She was just a teenager. If I remember correctly, she had glasses and braces then, a homely little bird. It thrills me that she has bloomed this way.
“Where’s Devin?” Gussy asks, unloading some gifts she’s brought for the girls as well as a dozen deviled eggs she whipped up before we left.
“He’ll be here soon. He’s gone into Quimby for some lumber. He’s fixing the deck on the tree house.”
The tree house. I can hardly believe it’s still here. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by a need to see it. To climb up the ladder into the trees.
“May I go see it?” I ask.
“The tree house?” Effie asks. “Of course! But don’t go up. The deck is rotted clear through. Zu-Zu almost broke her neck the last time she went up there. I had no idea how bad it had gotten.”
I leave Gussy and the girls in the kitchen and make my way around the camp to the path that leads into the thick brush and trees that surround the tree house. The path is marshy, and I wish I’d worn a pair of Gussy’s galoshes. I feel as though I’m walking into an inferno as I push aside the branches of the trees. The entire forest is ablaze. I can almost feel the colors singeing me. The burning somewhere deep in my chest. At the foot of the ladder I look up, and, for just a moment, I imagine him here. Johnny in his colorful Indian headdress beating his chest and howling into that achingly blue sky. He was a child, a little boy. I’ve had to remind myself this a thousand times.