Outside it was cloudless and clear.
Marla whistled, a low, sweet sound. In a moment she heard a noise behind her and turned to look. Her cat, Troubles, padded into the kitchen unhurriedly. When he was at her feet, she scooped him up. She held him to her breast just like she’d held Tim earlier, stroked his head and ears and rubbed her finger under his chin. He purred. She didn’t much like the cat, but he was her … pet. She carried him to the back door, pushed it open and dropped the cat outside.
“Go see what Old Tex is doing.” The cat wandered (unhurriedly) towards the front of the house. Marla watched until she couldn’t see him anymore.
She was glad Paula was back. It was unfortunate that the circumstances were less than perfect and probably going to get much, much worse. But in time she hoped Paula would come to see that there was no other way. All for one and one for all—that sort of thing.
And Rowan was perfect.
(she knew why too but she didn’t think Izzy did)
She considered for a moment whether her kids were really down for the night. Amy was for sure. And Tim? The little guy was exhausted and not likely to stir now. She decided they were.
Marla changed her clothes and went for a run.
EIGHT
T
HE BACKYARD STILL SMELLED A BIT
like barbecue sauce and steak, with undernotes of freshly mowed lawn. Through an open window in the house, Paula could hear canned laughter. Rowan had been beside herself with glee when she realized that Sanderson’s big-screen TV came with cable.
Sanderson had baked potatoes in the oven and tossed a green salad. He’d even picked up dessert—obviously going for the kid vote—a dozen brightly coloured monster cookies so sweet Paula could hardly finish one. Rowan had ploughed through three.
If he was trying to make friends and influence people, he was certainly making serious headway with Rowan and Old Tex. Paula wasn’t sure how she was going to peel her daughter away from the cable television and big cookies or Old Tex from the backyard, where he was now lying half a foot from Gusto. Old friends already.
They talked a little about what he had left behind when he moved to Haven Woods, carefully skirting his divorce. Too soon for that kind of talk. When it got close to her own love life, there were steaks to turn, potatoes to poke, a table to be set.
It was lovely. And
easy
.
After dinner, once Ro was settled in the sparsely furnished living room—a single long, obviously new leather sofa faced the big-screen TV, and that was it.
I’m still figuring out what I need,” he told them
—she and Sanderson went out into the backyard and collapsed into a couple of folding chairs, the sort you take camping, with a cup holder on the side that fits a beer bottle more easily than a cup of tea.
Sanderson took a long swallow of his beer. “Heaven, on a June day,” he said.
“My dad used to say that.”
“Mine too. My mom says, ‘Fill your boots.’ I’ve never quite figured out what it means. I think it’s sorta
do what you want
, you know?”
Paula nodded. “My mother never used to tell me anything directly. She quizzes. When I saw her today, all she wanted to know was who I saw, where did I go … when I got to talk to her at all.”
“How is she feeling?”
Paula groaned. “Her symptoms are so vague. When I got home from the park, I called every doctor in the book. From what I can tell, no one is treating her at all. The nurse there …” She trailed off, not wanting to get into a rant.
“My mom doesn’t like that I moved back to the old neighbourhood. She lives over in Lakewood now. Our fierce rivals—remember that? Lakewood Lynxes versus Haven Woods Hitters.” The baseball teams.
“Why doesn’t she like your moving home? You grew up here.”
“I have great memories of Haven Woods, but my mom seems to remember a lot of bad things.”
Paula took a drink of her beer and made a noncommittal sound.
(bad things
have
happened here)
“Remember the Chapman house?” Sanderson said. “The guy who killed his family?”
“Sure. We girls used to scare ourselves stiff telling tales about it. Wasn’t he supposed to have sacrificed his wife and kid to the devil? Used to give me nightmares. Is that what bothers your mother?”
“I think he just went nuts and killed them. Domestic homicide. But later, the rumour about Satanists practising the
dark arts”
—he deepened his voice comically—“that bothered her.”
“Did she think it was true?”
He shrugged. “The guy wrote on the walls: ‘He Lives Here’ and ‘Different god, different rules.’ Wasn’t that it? He was batshit crazy. Everybody was into weird stuff in the seventies, weren’t they? And every generation has their bad murder. In the sixties it was the Manson murders. The seventies was that guy who shot up that McDonald’s. What was in the eighties?”
“Glam rock,” she said. “May it burn in heck.”
He laughed and she was pleased.
Paula took another sip of beer. “So why did you move back?”
“You’re going to be sorry you asked.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him.
“No, I won’t. Tell me.”
“After college I lived in the city for a long time, got into the scene—you know, the clubs, the music. Girls. Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, all about going out. Hang out with some buddies at Bad Laundry for a beer and a burger. Hit a club or five, crawl home.” He laughed self-consciously. “Well, that’s what I did for about four years. Clubs, bars, drugs, beer, music, babes.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“It
was
fun. Good times. Then it turned a corner. Suddenly the same faces telling the same jokes, everybody trying to be hipper than the rest, finding a line—it was so substance-less. Is that a word?”
“Sure.”
“And it got to feel a little …
Masque of the Red Death–ish
. Do you remember that story? When that guy ran from room to room while everyone was at a party?”
“Yeah, I do remember. I’m impressed we both do.”
“It was like that. I kept going into the same room—same faces, same hangover—and after awhile I felt like I was missing everything important. So I married the best candidate: Kelly—my ex-wife now.”
He took a long swallow of beer. “We moved to the suburbs. Next on the agenda was a couple of kids, a fence, dog. I wanted it all, you know. Got Gusto about a month after we moved in. A starter baby.”
“Sounds perfect. What happened?” Paula asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. If you’re not comfortable.”
He raised his hand. “No, I don’t mind. It’s not a secret. It might require a fresh beer, though. How’s yours?” He stood and held his hand out for her bottle.
“You can bring me one, but this is still pretty good.”
Sanderson went inside the house.
It was dark enough that it was a strain to see. There were stacks of flattened boxes just outside the patio doors. In the middle of the yard was a pile of rubble. One side of the old barbecue was still intact and a sledgehammer leaned up against it. It looked as if there might be perennials in the bed along the back fence.
A home in the first stages of rebirth.
Paula was startled when she caught sight of the cat on the fence. It sat very still, the only sign that it was alive at all the steady, rhythmic flipping of its tail. When the patio doors opened, the cat jumped down soundlessly into the yard next door. The dogs hadn’t even noticed.
Sanderson passed her a cold beer, still capped. “We got married and moved to the burbs. And I was expecting”—he held out his hands, gesturing to all of Haven Woods—“a neighbourhood, you know?”
She did.
“The place we moved into, Terra Rija, it was so
new
there was no community there. We got to know some of the neighbours—over the back fence type of thing—but there was very little socializing, even after we joined the club, started golfing. We didn’t run into anybody except in the parking lot at Safeway. Remember the backyard parties the Rileys used to throw?”
“Sure, every weekend—”
“Our parents hanging out in the back, drinking beer and cocktails, while we did whatever we wanted. I remember riding my bike with David Riley, Pete, Lonnie, in the solid dark—had to be midnight—showing up back at the barbecue and the parents were still at it, laughing. Everybody eating s’mores.”
“Do you remember the night we all slept over in the Rileys’ family room? There had to be ten of us. We watched movies …”
“The original
Friday the 13th!
I remember it scaring my pants off, so to speak … I don’t think there was any hanky-panky.” In the dark Paula blushed.
c’mon no one will notice no one goes into the spare room
“And there was some song we kept singing … I think it was Bon Jovi.” He tried the chorus. “I
cried and I cried / There were nights that I died for you, baby
…”
The song played in her head as if she had heard it just that morning. David—all of them, she guessed, but she only remembered him—had sung it in her ear. She’d thought it was the height of romance.
“Our parents just seemed like stealth agents or something, moving behind the scenes, making our lives work but not showing us how to do it ourselves. I was useless for so long in the real world.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Stealth agents.”
“It was like that forever. Right up until David Riley died.”
Paula went blank. She was suddenly keenly aware of the chilly air, the sound of the television inside the house, the feel of the cold beer bottle against her thigh.
“You okay? You cold? We can go inside if you like.”
She shook her head. “No, this is good. I just … haven’t thought about that for a long time.”
“Oh man. Sorry. You were there that day?”
Paula inhaled the night air, closed her eyes. The beer was sweating against her pants. She took a swallow of her beer. “Yeah.”
“So was I.” Sanderson picked at the label on his bottle. “Do you know something?”
She turned to him. In profile he was very solid looking, a Marlboro man. “What?”
A slow smile spread on his face. “I had a big crush on you when we were about fifteen, sixteen. Before you left. But you were always with Riley.”
“You did not.”
“Yeah, I did. You had a red bathing suit with a funny round thing in the middle, and the straps went up around your neck … Whaddya call that?”
“A halter?” She thought back; there was a vague memory
(fighting against more vivid memories
I wanna change my top)
of the pool and the wobbling, adult feeling in the pit of her stomach when the boys looked at her, how she drank that up, at the same time wishing she could disappear. “I remember that suit,” she said.
“So do I. That suit gave me dreams.”
Paula cheeks got hot. “Oh,
please
… It was a long time ago.”
He nodded. “Yup.”
She sighed. “The steaks were great. This was really terrific, but I better get Ro back to the house and to bed.”
“I haven’t chased you away, have I?”
“No.” But she couldn’t stay.
“Good. Let’s do this again, okay?” He smiled broadly at her and she smiled back and the two them got up.
He towered over her. She looked up, then turned towards the house. Sanderson followed.
Rowan liked Mr. Keyes’s house way more than her grandma’s. It felt new inside. The walls were just walls; there was nothing on them. He probably had stuff he was going to put up, but he hadn’t done it yet and so it seemed … new. And it was such a relief to have real TV. She liked his house and him.
She was disappointed when she heard them come in through the patio doors. Already? Her mom probably thought it was time to get her home to bed, and this created a hard stone in her belly. She didn’t want to leave. She felt good here.
While they made noises with dishes and things in the kitchen, Rowan went to the table where his phone was. Using a pencil from the cup beside it and a piece of the newspaper that had been on the sofa, she wrote down the number on the phone. His number. 782-3314.
Just in case. Then she took the pink plastic crucifix out of the pocket of her St. Mary’s blazer, wrapped the folded paper around it and put the whole thing back in her pocket. It bulged a little bit and she liked that. If she wanted to, she could feel it anytime.
The two of them showed up in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Her mom’s face was pink and happy. Mr. Keyes’s face too. Rowan felt as if she’d missed something.
“Ro, we have to go now,” her mother said.
Gusto ran in through their legs, bumping her mom sideways so that she grabbed at the doorway. Mr. Keyes steadied her with his hand, even though he didn’t have to.
cripe
Old Tex followed, limping a little on the hardwood floors. The nails of both dogs sounded loud in the big, empty room. When Old Tex saw Rowan, his tail went up and started swinging back and forth. She crouched and he tucked his head into her arms.
(against her leg when she bent down she could feel the stuff in her pocket and that felt good felt
safe)
She mumbled dog-love words into his ear. “Hey boy, good dog.”
(what’s out there boy?)
“Let’s go, Ro. It’s getting late.”
On the front porch Rowan clipped Tex’s leash to his collar. Her mom stopped one last time on the porch. “Thanks again, Sandy. That was a wonderful dinner. I hope you’ll let me return the favour.”
Rowan turned away, rolling her eyes, when her mother started batting her damn eyelashes. On the porch railing was a glass pop bottle full of gunk and feathers. She picked it up. “What is this?” There was a faded ribbon around the neck of the bottle. It was dirty and worn, old.
“What is it?” Paula echoed.
Sanderson took it from Rowan, holding it up so they all could see it. “It’s called a witch bottle. It came with the house.”
“It’s really for witches?” Rowan asked.
“I think it’s for good luck or something. A lot of places around here have them.”
“Why did you take it down?” Rowan asked.
He pointed to the overhang of the porch roof. They all looked up. Dangling from the single hook was a multicoloured square made of sticks and yarn.
“Oh,” Paula said.
“That’s a God’s eye,” Rowan said. “We made them at school.”
“My mother practically begged me to hang it up.”
“They keep away evil,” Rowan said shyly.
He made a ghostly sound, wiggling his fingers at the two of them. Her mom laughed, but standing on the dark porch with the dark neighbourhood still to walk through, Rowan didn’t think it was that funny.
“So I have a witch bottle
and
a God’s eye to keep me safe,” Sandy said. “Lucky me, huh?”
They said good night again, and to Rowan’s disbelief, Paula refused his offer of a ride home, even though it was dark as pitch out and people had
witch bottles
on their porches. As one of God’s special little thinkers, Rowan thought,
WTF?
Paula sent Rowan to bed as soon as they got in the house. The girl went with a minimum of complaint, and Paula was grateful for small mercies.
Old Tex’s nails clicked on the floor. Paula turned to him, realizing she had forgotten to unclip his leash.