The Singing Bone (23 page)

His skin was so warm. Alice wanted to curl up in his lap and go back to sleep. He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom where Molly was fast asleep under the covers. He put Alice down next to Molly and pulled the quilt over her.

Mr. Wyck was out all day with Stover and Lee. Allegra said he was teaching them how to hunt. “It's deer season,” she said.

“But we don't eat meat,” Molly said. They were sitting at the dining room table.

Alice was poking at a grilled cheese sandwich. “I'm not hungry. Did you put something in my food last night?” Her stomach was queasy.

“Just to help you sleep. I know when I've had to sleep in there I couldn't fall asleep all night.” Allegra turned to Molly. “They won't kill anything. It's mainly for the shooting.”

“Oh,” Molly said. “I don't get it.” She went back to eating her sandwich. It was just past noon, but the sky was dark with a thunderstorm.

“Why did you have to sleep in there?” Alice asked.

Allegra rose to close the windows. “Well,” she said. “I was an addict. I couldn't be trusted. I stayed in there until I was clean.”

“Hey, leave that one open,” Molly said. “I like the breeze.”

“You close it when it starts to rain, then,” Allegra snapped. “Mr. Wyck says that when a person suffers abuse upon her body she must feel it, and suffer more abuse to cure it.”

“You stayed in the crawl space?” Alice was pulling the crust off her grilled cheese and nibbling at the bread. She liked the burnt buttery taste. “That's a lot of abuse to feel. How long does it take to get clean?”

“Maybe five days. I don't remember.”

Alice could see Stover, Lee, and Mr. Wyck in the distance. They stood on the edge of the forest and looked up into the sky. The wind blew the trees above them, bending the branches so much that Alice could not believe they didn't break. “That's a long time to stay in there,” Alice said.

“It worked, didn't it?” Allegra followed Alice's gaze. The men were running across the field towards the house. “I'm clean. My new drug is life.”

Molly rose to shut the window. She sat back down next to Allegra so she could watch Mr. Wyck run across the field. “He always knows what's right,” Molly said, and Alice and Allegra nodded in agreement.

That night, they all sat on their knees with their toes tucked under and sang for hours. By the time Alice got up, her toes were numb and her calves throbbed, but she felt light and full of air. Mr. Wyck rubbed her feet with tiger balm until the feeling came back. He slipped a little disk of something onto her tongue, and they got into bed together. Soon Molly joined them, and Trina—limb upon limb, shoulder to hip, hip to knee. Alice made love to Stover for the first time, and when no one was looking, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close and whispered “I'm scared” into his ear.

“Don't be,” he said. He looked down at her, his eyes half-closed. “That's just how they told you to feel.” She felt Allegra's fingers crawl up her arm. Alice wanted to ask Stover
Who told me that?
but there was no answer he could give her that would take away what was happening to her mind. A window had been opened and what she thought of as her inner self—her soul, maybe—kept lifting up and out of it, moving through the kind of air that she imagined was encountered at high altitudes, thin and cold and so hard to breathe in that it left one with a mind as clear and empty as a sheet of new glass.

Alice is lying on her back in her living room. She doesn't know how long she's been there. She came home from Sing Sing and fell asleep in her bed, but now she's here, on the floor. It must be the white pills. She's still dressed. She took four, hoping for oblivion. But here she is on the floor in her living room.
Maybe I'm dreaming
, she thinks. She was just talking to Stover, after all. He was there, wasn't he? She closes her eyes. She reaches her hands up as if she might touch him. She tries to sit, but her body is too heavy. She feels water-logged.
Water-logged,
Alice thinks, smiling. Yes. She lies back down. She closes her eyes, sings “Minorie,” the Scottish variant. She likes the part about the blackbirds, and lingers on those lines.
Oh sister oh sister we'll go see the broom, and wait until the black bird changes his tune.
She laughs, affecting a Scottish accent.

In the first grade, Alice, Trina, Molly, and Stover had a teacher from Scotland. Their parents made a to-do about it, saying, “Oh, she must get lonely for her family.” Alice's mother wondered aloud why she'd come to the States. Alice didn't care why Miss Abernathy was at her school, she was only glad that she was.

Miss Abernathy taught them how to read and count backwards from one hundred. At the end of the winter, they spent an afternoon planting seeds in dirt in ceramic dishes. Every day, Alice ran to the sunny windowsill to see if her plants were growing yet. Each dish had a child's name on it, and Molly's and Trina's and Stover's dishes were lined up next to Alice's—one after the other.

Miss Abernathy kept baby chicks in an incubator and played the old piano that sat in the corner of the room. She taught them a funny song about a king who lived in a glass castle. Everyone laughed at the way she said “glass.” Near Easter, they made cards for one another and everyone had to guess who made them. The children stood up before the room and read the cards aloud. The cards had jokes on them and were signed with a dot to represent each letter in a child's name. In the winter, they learned how to knit, and Alice made a scarf for her mother out of the brown wool Miss Abernathy gave to her.

Before lunch, they played a game where they had to sing and dance. Alice's favorite was the song about the three sisters and the robber. To play, the children were broken up into groups of four. Trina always pulled Stover over and Alice pulled Molly in. Alice took Trina's hand and Molly's hand, and Stover stood in the middle. Molly and Trina closed the circle, and then Miss Abernathy began to play the piano. The piano's pitch was slightly off, and it always seemed to Alice that something extra was banging about in the wooden box with the hammer and strings, but the song was adequate, and the children circled one way and then the other.

Stover didn't have to do anything but stand there, but he liked to move a little bit. He jumped and clapped, and pretended to try to get away from them. “You can't!” Molly yelled above the music. “Go back, Stover,” Trina said, and then he would. And when they began to sing,
He took the first one by the hand
—and Stover pulled Trina in—
He whirled her round till she could not stand
—Stover turned Trina around and around and around in circles until he made her dizzy, and Trina made a show of falling to the ground. Miss Abernathy banged the song on the piano, singing high and off-key.
He whirled her round till she could not stand
,
Down by the bonnie banks of Airdrie, O!

And then Stover took Molly and pulled her in. They jumped up and down together, while Alice, alone now, ran in circles around them singing,
Will you be a robber's wife, Or will you die by my penknife?
Then Alice turned and skipped the other way while Stover spun Molly in circles until she fell down, singing
I'll not be a robber's wife, I'd rather die by your penknife,
and Miss Abernathy's voice rose, a strange trilling bird flapping about the room.
I'll not be a robber's wife, Down by the bonnie banks of Airdrie, O!

And then it was Alice's turn. Stover reached for her, but instead, even though she hadn't planned to, she ran from him. She went to the other side of the classroom. At first laughing and dodging him when he came after her, and then in earnest, she ran through the coatroom and back into the class. Stover was behind her, reaching. She could feel him there, his hand almost on her shoulder. She wasn't allowed to run, to turn away. She was breaking the rules.

The music stopped and Miss Abernathy stood up from the piano. “Alice Pearson!” she called out, her glasses low on her nose, her hands at her hips. “Alice Pearson, love, what are you about?”

Molly came over and leaned down to look at her, because Alice had climbed under a desk and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Alice,” Molly whispered, her blond curls brushing Alice's cheek as she came closer. “Come out.” Molly wrapped her arms around Alice.

Stover was crying. He was sitting on the other side of the room, which didn't seem right. Alice looked around to see who was right behind her, but no one was there. “Stover,” Miss Abernathy said. “You didn't do anything wrong. Poor Alice is just frightened. We all get frightened sometimes.”

How did he get over there? Alice wondered. A moment ago, he was right behind her.

“It's just pretend,” Trina said. “Alice.” She kneeled down. “Stover's not a robber.”

Miss Abernathy said, “Molly, bring Alice out of there. She's gone and gotten herself all scared. It's just a song, dear. No one's really hurt. Come out and have a look at everyone.”

Alice crawled out and sat on her feet and looked up at her classmates. They stood around her in a scattered half-circle looking back. “I'm sorry, Alice,” Stover said. Alice stood and took Molly's hand.

“It's okay.”

“See?” Miss Abernathy said, coming closer and leaning down so that Alice could see her face. “It's called playacting. Everyone's fine. Trina's fine. Molly's fine.” Miss Abernathy pointed around the room, naming all the children who had fallen down. “They're all fine.” Alice nodded. And when Miss Abernathy touched her on the top of the head and called her “funny duck,” Alice tried to smile for her.

But all the rest of the day, Alice had a feeling like someone was standing too close to her. At math time—or “maths” as Miss Abernathy called it—as Alice counted princesses on her worksheet, she had to do her best to stop turning to look over her shoulder. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the shape there: the measured breath, the shadowed form. If he wasn't behind her (
wasn't it a he?
she thought; it seemed so as she gnawed at her pencil's eraser), he was at the window, looking in, or pacing the length of the playground. But when she finally looked, there was no one at the window or hiding behind the coats, either, and for that matter, no one under her bed that night and no one in her closet.

Finally, the feeling began to dissipate and soon it all but vanished, but like fog the sun burns away, she kept a memory of it and recognized it for what it was when the feeling came back. It crept up on her a few times a year with no predictable pattern. She could be holding her mother's hand and scouting for a spot on a crowded, sunny beach or walking alone to the mailbox after dark. It didn't matter. He was always just out of sight. Was it something that was coming? Had it already passed?

Years later, when Alice was released by the police and to the psychiatric wing of the hospital, she would ask her therapist about it. “Do you think some people are haunted?”

“What do you mean by ‘haunted'?”

“Well,” Alice began. She crossed her legs the other way and folded her arms. “Like something is always following them and watching them?”

The therapist wrote something in her notebook and looked at Alice. “Something?”

Alice told her about Miss Abernathy and the singing game. “It felt like a shadow attached itself to me.” Alice curled her hair over her fingers. She wished her therapist would let her smoke, but she could only smoke outside. “A spirit.”

“A spirit? Absolutely not. I think it's possible to
feel
that way though. Especially if one's life is difficult.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No. Do you?”

Alice slowly nodded her head,
Yes
, she thought.
Yes
. And she fought the urge to turn in her chair and look behind her, because whatever it was had come back again. Her therapist couldn't see it, but he was there—whatever he was. He would always be there. It didn't matter if one believed it or not. It was true.

Ariel knows Brooklyn. It's where she grew up, so Hans leaves the driving to her. “I've never been this far up,” he says. There are fewer people on the street. The avenues are wider.

“You've probably only been to Brooklyn Heights. That's as far as most Manhattanites ever venture.”

Hans smiles. She's right. He can see the Verrazano Bridge. The bridge disappears when Ariel turns a corner. The side streets are narrow with gray stone row houses, trash cans behind black iron fences. When they get out of the car, Hans looks up and down the street.

Allegra's sister's house is the fourth one down. Her name is Sophia. Ariel found her. Of course. Sophia is expecting them. She opens the door wide, smiling. “Come in,” she says. They go into the kitchen. Ariel is fast with the tripod, the camera. The light is good. Warm. Sophia serves them coffee in bright yellow mugs. “Do you know anything about my sister yet?” she asks, raising her eyebrows as she pours the coffee. Sophia is the older sister. Her black hair is cut in a clean bob. Her two children are in college. Her husband is at work. She looks like Allegra might now, Hans thinks. The round eyes, the straight nose. She's small in stature. “I miss her.” Sophia sits down with Hans at the kitchen table. “Still.”

Hans doesn't have to coax her into talking in front of the camera. She's comfortable. Calm. She wants her sister back. Maybe this will help. “Did you ever hear from her?” Hans asks. “After she left?”

Sophia nods. “She came here. She stayed for a week. I wanted her to stay for a year, but she said she had something she had to do. She told me she would be back in a few days. She never came.”