M
ena came home from rehearsals earlier than Sam expected. He suggested she go for a swim, said he might join her in a bit. Now, while she floats in the still water of the lake, he tries to figure out how to deal with Finn and the acre of weed growing behind their house. Sam told Finn that Alice could stay there for the night. Apparently her father, some asshole wife beater, is out of jail. Like they didn’t have enough problems. And he can’t confront Finn with Alice around; he’ll have to wait until she’s gone. He also figures he shouldn’t let on that he knows about the weed until he’s got a plan.
His mind is reeling. Finn could go to jail for something like this.
He
could go to jail. Granted, the plants had to have been growing here when they bought the place, but clearly, Finn has been tending to them. Someone has been taking good care of those plants. There must be a hundred of them. And as remote as Gormlaith feels, when it comes to breaking the law, you’re never really too far away from an eager cop.
Obviously;
they’ve got one across the road.
Even though it’s nearly four o’clock, he makes another pot of coffee. He hopes that it will help clear his head. While the coffee brews, he sits down at the table and puts his head in his hands. He needs to get rid of the plants. But he’s not sure how to even go about doing that. He knows he can pull them up, but then what? Put them in the compost? Can you do that? Goddamn, he wishes he had the Internet here.
The phone rings.
“Hi, Sam? It’s Hilary Ortiz.The couple, the ones I told you about, have made an offer. They want the house.”
“I’ll have to call you back,” Sam says. He hangs up the phone and paces.
Outside, he can see Mena swimming in the lake, the robin’s egg blue of her bathing suit. Forty-one years old, and she still looks incredible in a bikini. Softer, rounder than she was as a girl, but strong. Graceful.
The library. Maybe the library’s still open. He gathers his bag, his keys, and heads outside.
“Mena!” he hollers across the water.
She is floating on her back, her eyes closed.When she hears him, she rolls over and starts to swim toward him.
“I’m running into town,” he says. “Do you need anything?”
“Just some eggs,” she says. “And Q-tips?”
“Got it!” he says, and watches her swim back away from him. Watches her strong arms, her legs.
Finn.
Christ
.
He gets in the station wagon, adjusts the seat, and turns the key. The car smells like Mena. Like her perfume, Anaïs Anaïs, and coffee. He breathes her in, leaves the windows rolled up, and takes off.
The windows are filthy from the dirt road. He flicks the lever to release the wiper fluid and turns on the wipers.There’s a piece of paper stuck under one of the blades.
“Shit,” he says. Probably a flyer somebody stuck under there when Mena was in town for rehearsals. A parking ticket? Do they even issue parking tickets in Quimby?
He pulls the car over to the side of the road and yanks the piece of paper out from under the wiper. He glances at it—maybe it’s a coupon for the new pizza place or something. It’s damp from the wiper fluid. He starts to crumple it up and then stops when he sees his name:
Samuel Mason
.
He gets in the car with the note in his hands, unfolds it.
Found your little hiding place.
Christ. Somebody’s found the weed. Who is it? Jesus, it’s probably the fucking cop. He knows this area better than anybody. He imagines him out traipsing around on their property. Trespassing. Jesus.
His hands are trembling. He needs to dispose of the plants right away. But if the cops know, someone’s probably staked out, watching.
Jesus
. If they’re watching him, he can’t exactly go to the library to research how to dispose of marijuana plants.
He is driving faster than he should for this road. He has to concentrate on going slow, watching the speedometer. The last thing he needs is to get pulled over. To have an accident. When he drives past the cop’s house, that stupid dog starts barking and running alongside the car. He slams on his brakes and slows to a crawl until he’s sure the dog is not underneath his tires. The dog gives one last howl, and Sam watches him disappear in his rearview mirror.
Maybe he should just pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on. For Christ’s sake, they just bought the cabin. They’ve only been there for a couple of months. He can just warn Finn. Tell him that he’s got to stop tending the garden. He wonders what kind of paraphernalia Finn’s got in his room. That’s it; he’s got to just get rid of every shred of evidence in the house. Any connection between Finn and the plants. He gets to a place in the road where he can turn the car around and makes a U-turn in the middle of the road. He creeps past the cop’s house again, and the dog has retired underneath a pickup truck in the driveway. He stares Sam down as he passes.
Mena is not in the water when he gets back to the house. She is sitting on a blanket spread out at the water’s edge. Effie is with her now, the baby on her lap.
“What are you doing home?” Mena asks.
“Forgot something,” Sam says.
“Hi, Sam!” Effie says, waving to him. “Thanks again for coming to the book club. Every one of your books has been checked out ever since. They loved you!”
“Thanks.”
Inside, he can see them through the window. He is pretty sure he can do a clean sweep of Finn’s room before they come in.
When he goes into Finn’s room, he immediately feels like he’s trespassing. His own father had told him once that there’s nothing as sacred as a person’s privacy. He’d never worried about his father coming into his room, going through his things. Of course, he’d had very little to hide back then:
Delta of Venus,
for Christ’s sake, maybe some cigarettes. Sam is afraid of what he might find here.
He looks through Finn’s drawers. He finds rolling papers, an almost empty Baggie that probably used to have weed in it. He finds a green lighter. A bottle of the sleeping pills Mena’s doctor prescribed after Franny died. He throws everything into the trash can he’s carrying. He slips his hands between the mattresses, finds a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, a
Hustler
magazine. Where the hell did he get that? He leaves those there. He finds some printouts on how to grow and harvest marijuana and he shoves them in the trash. He peers through the window at Mena. She’s holding Zu-Zu, laughing. Happy. He opens every drawer, searches through every pocket. He gets down on his hands and knees and peers under the bed.
It’s filthy under there. A thick sheet of dust. Dirty socks. Pencils, a pair of sneakers, dryer sheets.There’s also a shoe box, way underneath. Sam gets down on his stomach and reaches under, pulling the box toward him with his fingertips. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Drugs. A gun? But when he opens the box, his heart nearly stops. Inside: no drugs, no firearms, no porn. Just Franny’s diary, the little blue one embossed with gold they gave her for her fifteenth birthday. It is tethered shut with a flimsy metal clasp. He could pry it open with a paper clip, snap it between his fingers. He imagines her, turning that tiny little key, the one she wore hanging on a gold chain around her neck, locking all of this up, keeping whatever is inside safe from their eyes. Keeping their eyes safe from whatever is inside. And he can’t do it. Instead, he takes the journal, as if it were just another piece of contraband, and tucks it into his pocket.
M
ena takes Zu-Zu from Effie, putting her on her hip so she can still see her mother. “Take your time,” Mena says to Effie. “We’ll be just fine.”
“God, thank you so much,” Effie says.
Effie peels off her clothes and walks into the water. She waves at Zu-Zu. “I’ll be right out, sweetie.” And then she disappears under the water, resurfacing again about a hundred feet farther out in the lake.
Mena remembers the joy of this: the moments of liberation from the kids.When Sam would take one or both of the twins with him somewhere and she could take a bath. A nap. Read without one or both of them crawling across the pages of her book. What she wouldn’t do to have that back, all that chaos. All that need.
“You want to go inside and have some juice?”
Zu-Zu smiles.
Mena carries her back up the hill to the house. Sam has left again; the wagon is not in the driveway. Inside, she goes to the fridge and finds a plastic tumbler in the cupboard, a carton of orange juice.With Zu-Zu still on her hip, she pours the juice into the cup, holds it to her lips. Helps her drink.
“Isn’t that good?” she coos. “You’re such a sweet baby.”
She sits down at the kitchen table, puts Zu-Zu on her lap. She touches her hair, the tight black coils that spring from her head like little Slinkys.
There’s a pile of mail on the table. She needs to go through the stuff that’s been forwarded from California, pay the bills. With her free hand, she rifles through the pile. The manila folder that Monty dropped off is still there. Curious, she dumps the letters out onto the table. There are about a dozen inside. Sam hasn’t opened any of them yet. He used to love reading the fan mail. They’d read the letters together sometimes. She hesitates and then opens the first one. Sam won’t mind. It’s postmarked North Conway, New Hampshire.
Dear Mr. Mason, I’m a huge fan. I have read
The Hour of Lead
literally about a hundred times
. Blah, blah, blah. The second one, from Lubbock, Texas:
Dear Samuel Mason, I am senior at Texas Tech, and we are reading
The Art of Hunting
in my Contemporary American Literature class. I was wondering if you might answer some questions I had ...
She stuffs the letters back into their envelopes. Then there is a bundle of letters, all postmarked Phoenix, Arizona. Mena reads the first one:
Dear Mr. Mason, I just wanted to let you know that despite your request that I look elsewhere for a literary subject, I would like to give you one more opportunity to authorize my biography. I believe that you might reconsider if I were able to talk to you in person. Please call me at your earliest convenience. All my best, Dale Edwards.
She opens the next one as well:
Mr. Mason, I am beginning to think that you are not receiving these letters. I am certain you would have responded by now if you were, indeed, reading them. However, unless you respond, I plan to pursue this project. As I said before, I have a publisher who is ready to publish this with or without your authorization, though we certainly would prefer to receive your stamp of approval.
Mena is confused. Sam hasn’t mentioned anything about a biographer. She looks at the envelope again, at the Arizona postmark. She tears open another envelope and shakes its contents out onto the table. It’s a printout from a Web site. A yellow Post-it note stuck to the center says
Last chance!
Mena tears it off.
She gasps, grabbing onto Zu-Zu tightly. Zu-Zu picks up the Post-it and sticks it to her shirt.
The first photo on the page is taken from the jetty in front of their house. She would recognize this view from anywhere. In the picture, Franny is standing facing the water, alone. She is just a dark sliver of a girl, a frightening silhouette against the setting sun. Just a shadow of Franny. Under the photo, it says,
Fasting is the life of the angels
—Pseudo-Athanasius.
Posted by Ana-Franny.
The photo below this one makes Mena’s stomach turn. It’s a young girl, blond curly hair to her waist, wearing nothing but a pale bra and pair of panties. She is standing in front of a mirror, and a camera obscures her face. It is one of those images that is so shocking Mena’s mind simply can’t accept that it’s real. Like looking at a contortionist or some sort of carnival freak. But it
is
real, the girl is real, and in the mirror’s reflection Mena sees the antique dresser in Franny’s room.
“I
’m going with you,” Finn says, nodding. “I’ll find a place to stay. Nearby.”
Alice shakes her head. “You’ll be back in California in a month. You can come find me then. I’ll come down to San Diego. It’ll be fine. I promise.”
They are in her purple room. The front and back doors are dead-bolted, and her mother has already left to stay with a friend of a friend in town for the night. Alice is supposed to meet her at the bus station at 6:00
A.M.
She is
leaving
.
Finn is lying on the lavender bedspread, playing with the purple fringe on a lavender throw pillow. He stares at the indigo sky above him, at the haphazard constellations.
Alice empties her drawers into a big purple suitcase. He watches her pack her clothes, the careful way she folds the socks and shirts and jeans. He can smell the heady smell of her detergent. It makes his stomach jump. Twist.
“Do you not want me to come?” he asks, sitting up. “You can tell me.”
Alice stops packing and sits down next to him. She picks up his hand and holds it in her lap. She is looking at him hard, like she’s trying to figure something out. He feels self-conscious; his ears are growing hot. After a long time she says, “Are you sure?”
He nods.
“So what do we do?”
“We’ll stay at my house tonight, just like we planned,” he says. Already everything is starting to feel real. “And in the morning I’ll offer to take you into town. To say good-bye. But then I’ll get on the bus too.”
“What will we tell my mom?” she asks.
He thinks about it for a minute, looks at the picture of Alice and her mother in the purple fuzzy frame on her dresser.
“I’ll get on first, sit in the back. By the time she figures it out, it’ll be too late.”