The Accidental Siren (8 page)

It goes without saying: my mother had a big
heart. If she knew what I knew about the little girl in Whit’s
suburb, she would do everything in her power to set things
straight. However, Mom’s emotional response would be countered by
Dad’s debilitating logic. He would explain in his calm,
condescending tone that we don’t have all the facts, that we don’t
know the whole situation, and that it would be a shame to call
Social Services on an innocent woman.

If I wanted to convince them both of Mara’s
situation, I was gonna need proof.

Meanwhile, the castle routine continued as
usual. Despite her fears, Livy passed the seventh grade with As on
every exam. The twins were little balls of mayhem, and Fantasia
was... still just a baby. Dad spent the first eight hours of every
weekday at the firm, then came home and retired to the
eagle-watching tower with binoculars and a glass of wine. At seven
o’clock he emerged in a lackadaisical mood for dinner and time with
the family.

Every Monday, Mom hired a pair of babysitters
to supervise an at-home daycare in our basement. Her friends
arrived at noon, dropped their youngsters alongside the twins and
Fantasia in the downstairs playroom, then joined my mother in the
library for “The Demi Moore Cigar Club.” Although it would be two
years until the
Ghost
actress appeared on the cover of
Cigar Aficionado
, rumors of her bold tastes and macho
elegance earned the respect of women from Hollywood to West
Michigan. Mom’s club even had its own cigar box with fancy clips
and trays.

When the ladies were settled, I wiggled
through my secret passage and held my ear to the seam of light that
defined the library-side hatch. The voices were clear, but despite
bouts of laughter, the conversation was dull.

The privacy of the passage encouraged my
curiosity. From my stack of books I removed a children’s
encyclopedia I normally used for screenplay ideas (the entries on
medieval times and the Brother’s Grimm provided a full sketchbook
of inspiration). I held the hefty book beneath Mickey’s lamplight
and turned to the index.

“
Sex, see Reproduction.”

Back to the “R”s.

“
Reproduction, 44, 180, 234, 496”

Flip to page four-ninety-six and...
jackpot!

I stumbled across this page a dozen times
during my research, but I always gagged at the drawings of naked
people and giggled at the word “scrotum.”

This time, something was different. I read
the curious words with genuine interest:
“seminal,” “fallopian,”
“cervix,” “urethra”;
black lines connecting each word to a
corresponding pastel blob in the exposed guts of the nudists. The
pictures fascinated me, particularly a colorful cross-section of an
erect penis sticking straight up inside a vagina. I tried to
imagine how it must look in real life, but I couldn’t get the
technical drawing out of my head. As I focused on the image, a warm
feeling swelled between my thighs–

“
Hey dorkface!”

It was Livy!
I slammed the book,
snapped off the Mickey lamp, and hugged my knees in the
darkness.

“
James!”
she yelled again.
“There’s
a package for you!”

* * *

The film was already warm when I opened the
envelope; the brown ribbon hugged the reel in a tight, immaculate
spiral of images and magnetic sound.

Whit wasn’t due for another forty-five
minutes.

I heaved my father’s projector from the
storage closet to my hideout. He bought the machine at a garage
sale a few years back so we could watch Mom’s old family movies
from Cleveland. Now it was mine.

Clamps with rubber tips held a white towel to
the banisters, creating a small but reliable movie screen. My
stubby fingers rushed to feed the film’s tiny perforations into the
projector’s gears while drops of sweat formed on the peaks of my
ears. Dismantling a time bomb would have been less
nerve-wracking.

A flick of the switch and the bulb ignited
the towel with a tattered white square of scratches and specks. The
cone of light illuminated a swirl of dust and I inhaled deeply the
robust scent of heated acetate.

Like the click of a baseball card in bike
spokes, the machine pulled the film across the lens to create a
wild scramble of orange and yellow. The built-in speaker screeched.
I lowered the volume so the women wouldn’t hear.

Suddenly, the ladies, the castle, my world
dissolved. I was alone with my thoughts and the unfocused image...
and Mara’s voice. I didn’t know the song–another church song–but
the effect was the same. Heavy breathing accompanied the melody. It
was a raspy, distorted breathing that tugged my neck hairs like a
static-charged balloon.

The image bounced, cleared, and reeled into
it’s final position, gazing into the darkness of a single familiar
lamppost and snow covered trees. The picture bobbed with morbid
breaths. Then, from the grainy shadows and the winter wonderland,
the boys appeared; only a handful, zombie-like and staring directly
at me.

There was no question that Ms. Grisham was
the crappy camera operator, sitting in her recliner beside the
window. Her breath became a chant that muffled Mara’s voice; a
garbled tirade with words unfamiliar.

The snow zoomed through the lamplight and
stuck like spit-wads to the faces of the boys. Then, the camera
whirled in a burst of blue and yellow streaks and landed on a wide
composition of the antique living room. Mara crowned that blood-red
platform like a music-box ballerina. She was in her underwear; her
ankle handcuffed to the bolted eye-hook in the center of the
stage.

* * *

In the driveway, Mom laughed with Mrs.
Bullard and Mrs. Greenfield as the other women strapped their kids
in car seats. There were jokes about roach clips, compliments on
the newest phase of the castle’s renovation, and playful
suggestions to make the cigar club a daily retreat.

When the last minivan was gone, Mom noticed
me straddling Leo’s stone back. Her smile faded when she saw my
eyes. I stepped off the lion, approached her slowly, and fell into
a bear hug.

I told her about Roslyn. I told her about my
late-night trip to the Grisham house. I knew the consequences, but
I didn’t care.

Whit arrived at the peak of my confession. My
cheeks were red and stained with tears. The film was in my mother’s
hand.

Despite her calming reassurance–despite the
burning embarrassment and the sickness from what I saw–I could not
shake the memory of the raspy chant that distorted my angel’s
song.

* * *

Tuesday.

Dad suggested I stay, but Mom let me go.

I met Whit behind the cul-de-sac mailbox a
moment before Mr. Anderson arrived. He was a friend from Social
Services and my mother’s mentor when she first became a foster
parent.

Mom met him at the window of his brown van
and gave him the film.

He unspooled the header. He held it to the
sunlight. He closed one eye and pulled out a yard of film. He
paused every few inches to scan the tiny pictures, then spooled the
reel and jammed it in his lapel pocket.

Whit’s shoulders fell and he shook his head.
“Always gotta do the right thing, huh?”

Three clicks and Ms. Grisham opened the door
in a plain purple dress and curlers in her hair. Reluctantly, she
invited Mom and Mr. Anderson inside.

Thirty minutes later, two patrol cars arrived
without sirens. Inside, the woman screamed.

Ms. Grisham was removed from her
home–thrashing and cursing–in the arms of two police officers.

“Jesus Christ has damned you all!” she cried,
feet dragging the sidewalk and curlers unravelling. “Get behind me,
Satan! Tempt me no more! Send that whore back to Babylon and put
that demon down!”

The officers strengthened their hold, then
flattened her across the hood of the car.

“Damn her!” she screamed. “Damn that bitch to
hell!”

One officer read the woman her rights. The
other secured the handcuffs and ducked her into the car.

Mom appeared at the doorway, one hand on her
hip, the other covering her mouth. She watched the patrol cars
drive away and her chest heaved. She turned around and nodded
once.

Mr. Anderson emerged at last, holding the
delicate hand of a downcast little girl. Mara didn’t look up. Mom
touched her shoulder and led her to the passenger side of the van
while Mr. Anderson jumped in the driver’s seat. From our poor
vantage behind the mailbox, Whit and I couldn’t see the girl or my
mother, but the van remained motionless for a very long time.

Finally, Mr. Anderson turned the engine and
drove away. Mom waved, and as she crossed the street to our car, I
could tell that she too had been crying.

* * *

The twins were sent to bed early and Dad
rallied Livy and me to the dining room for a family meeting. Mom
was already seated and rocking Fantasia to sleep.

Dad spoke slowly with his hands folded
between us, pausing every so often to judge our reactions from the
rim of his glasses. “Your mother and I talked it over, and we think
it’s best if Mara stays with us for the summer...”

My chest–

“...just until we can find her a permanent
home.”

I couldn’t breathe but I couldn’t let them
see.
A surge of blood darkened my vision and I thought for sure
I was going to faint.

“Where will she sleep?” Livy asked.

“Well,” Mom said, “the twins are already
settled in the third bedroom, and since the downstairs guest room
is still unfinished, we thought you might let Mara stay with
you.”

Livy rolled her eyes. “Can I still have
sleepovers?”

“Of course.”

She sighed dramatically, then nodded. “Yeah,
that’d be cool.”

“What about you, James,” Dad asked.

I nodded. It was all I could do.

We discussed a few more particulars, then Mom
stood from her chair and tapped Livy’s shoulder. “Let’s let the
boys talk for a bit. Help me put the baby to bed?” As my sister
grumbled, Mom winked at Dad and left the room.

For an hour and seventeen minutes, my deepest
fears were realized. The situation with Mara and that glimpse of
Roslyn’s thigh prompted The Dreaded Talk. For an hour and seventeen
minutes, I learned from my father the truth about boys and girls. I
learned the reason that I wet the bed in more scientific detail
than any encyclopedia could offer.

Dad’s speech concluded with a hug that
dissipated the blush in my cheeks. He nodded to my room. “There’s a
present on your bed,” he said.

“A present?”

“For doing the right thing.” He smiled and
smacked the back of my head.

I ran. I nearly tripped over the parlor rug.
I opened my door and flicked on the light and saw–sitting smack in
the middle of my dinosaur comforter–a brand new video camera.

4. CAMERA
TESTS

Whit begged me to invite him to dinner the
night Mara arrived. Luckily, Mom had a standing rule that forbade
visitors on the first day of a new arrival, so I could tell my
friend that I didn’t have a choice. Dinner would be strange enough
without
a perv in a wheelchair.

I had three days to prepare. First, I slyly
solicited Mom for a haircut, claiming the three inches of shag was
making my head sweat in the summer heat. Next, I “accidentally”
dropped my Fraggle Rock toothbrush in the toilet. Dad told me to
boil it in water... but Mom saved the day and replaced it with a
plain toothbrush from her bottomless bin of backup toiletries. My
room was gagging on Star Wars memorabilia, Jurassic Park dinosaurs,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, and posters of
Harrison Ford, but I couldn’t hide the trove without stirring my
family’s suspicions. I searched out the most embarrassing aliens
and the largest dinosaurs and shoved them under my bed. Mr. Ford
could stay.

Last winter, Mom snagged a pamphlet on child
obesity from the YMCA and suggested that I use it as a guide to
earning my Super Nintendo. Annoyed, I shoved it in my junk drawer
and forgot about it. But now...
I was motivated!
I retrieved
the pamphlet, studied the charts, and determined my goal weight to
be one hundred and twenty-five pounds. I borrowed Mom’s scale and
stepped up. Twenty pounds to go.

A NordicTrack ski machine sat beside the
laundry-room door in the basement. One of the cords was tangled
around the wooden base, and a row of newly-pressed shirts hung from
the extension bar. The rest of the exercise equipment fit easily
inside a wicker basket: a knotted jumprope, mismatched barbells, a
Thigh Master, a Walkman with earphones, Livy’s hot-pink headband,
and a series of Jane Fonda workout tapes. Dad called Ms. Fonda a
“horses ass”–the only time I heard him swear–but Mom claimed she
only liked the woman for her motivating exercise routines. While
the family slept, I hooked a VCR into my six-inch bedroom TV and
danced like a baboon with the aging actress as my guide.

For three nights I slept in a pool of my own
sweat. I dreamt of Mara again, but I woke up nervous instead of
wet. Did she know that I was the reason she was taken from her
home? What if she was mad at me? What if she really loved her
pseudo-aunt? Surely she would be grateful; after all, I saved her
life. Right?

Although I was never
stinky
fat like
Trent Rainwater, I hedged my bets and borrowed Dad’s deodorant for
the big night. I combed my hair just enough to look nice, but not
enough to encourage Livy’s jokes. I wore a simple red tee and my
baggiest pair of jeans. I brushed my teeth three times.

Mom was scheduled to arrive with Mara at
five-thirty. While she was out, Dad watched kids instead of birds
and “cooked dinner” with a phone call to Domino’s. As usual, the
delivery boy couldn’t find our hidden drive, but Dad accounted for
the extra twenty minutes and the pizza arrived with the ladies.