This Raging Light (9 page)

“That's insane,” I say.

“Philly.”

We eat some, and he looks at me sideways. “You know what I was thinking about?”

“What?” This is a really, really good sandwich. Even better since Digby bought it for me, and the Coke goes down with just the right amount of bubbles.

“The paintings you used to make when we were little.”

I wipe away at some steak juice. This was the last thing I was expecting.

“What about them?”

“I was just wondering if you ever do that anymore. Paint.”

Shake my head.

“Too bad. They were good. I mean, I remember thinking they were back then. You were covered in paint all the time. I remember my mom telling your mom to put you in overalls because you were ruining everything you owned.”

That's where the overalls came from. I totally forgot. And the painting?

It's amazing what you can forget, even about yourself. I don't think I've picked up a paintbrush since I was nine years old.

“So why'd you stop?”

“I'm not sure. I just did. Grew out of it, I guess.”

A breeze whooshes by, and even though it's a city street, it gets really quiet.

“You all right?” he says, finally.

“Fine.” I put the sandwich down in my lap.

“I mean, after your mom, your dad, and everything?”

“I'm
fine.
” It comes out so loud, I startle myself. “Jesus. I wish everyone would stop asking me that. If I'm not fine, I will tell you.”

“Okay, okay.” He scrunches up the yellow paper. “I'm just trying to be considerate.”

“You can have the rest of my sandwich if you want it.” A feeble attempt at peace.

“I'm a one-cheesesteak kind of guy, thanks.” He shakes his head and his hair flops across one eye again. “I have a surprise for you.”

Turns out there's a noon café concert just a few blocks from Independence Hall. He really did have a plan. So he takes me into the darkness after all. Digby Jones is turning out to be a very confusing person.

People are drinking beer and standing around, some are even dancing. It's Jupiter's Green Daisy playing today, and the band is so tight that I get thick in the throat. Dad would love this. This is home. I forgot it was. Music carries the weight of being human, takes it away so you don't have to think at all, you just have to listen. Music tells every story there is. This isn't the especially dancy kind. It's more of a swoon and I just take it in. I can't help but sway some, and Digby is so close to me, right behind me so I can feel him there. I want to lean back into him, but I don't. Then his fingers are on my arm again, touching light, tracing slowly, and my lungs are huge, bigger than they ever have been. I don't ever want it to stop.

Trace me forever.

In my perfect movie version of life, this is when he grabs me, turns me around, and kisses me. We are there in the inscrutable darkness, and the drums are beating inside us and his lips are on mine and he is breathing me in all hot. Not like the sad slobbery kisses I've gotten. Not like the dry sandpaper ones either.

The music stops and his hand drops and everything collapses. I tell him I'll be right back and I go into the bathroom. Something is falling out from under me. Is it the earth? I stare at myself in the grimy mirror. I've been avoiding mirrors for so long.

You are so messed up, girl,
I think at my reflection.

A woman with way-too-cool Manic Panic red hair is reapplying her matching red lipstick. I want to ask her if we can swap bodies. I want to run back to Digby and wrap my legs around his waist, put myself all over him. I want to ask him why he is doing this to me. I want to yell at him that he is screwing with me now, that he should stop touching me if he doesn't want me, that I am going to drown in him and I am already drowning. I force myself to look in the mirror again. Wren's right. I look like Mom.

The way home is pretty quiet. I have my window cracked, and Digby is playing music I don't recognize. The green blur outside looks like soup to me as we drive fast, faster than I want to, back to Cherryville.

“I know you don't want to talk about . . . things,” he says, “and I really don't mean to upset you.”

I pry my nose away from the glass and look at him. It hurts my eyes. He hurts my everything.

He glances my way, then looks back to the road. “But,” he goes on, “have you given any more thought to the person who broke into your house? I mean, does it bother you? Because it bothers me.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I guess.” One loose lock has fallen on his cheek, and I want to push it back. “It really wasn't you?”

“Nope,” he says.

“Promise?”

“Look at me,” he says.

I do. I do. I do.

“I did not put food in your house,” he says. “I would tell you. I swear.”

I want to cry again. It's like a reflex from hell.

“Hey.” He puts a hand on my leg. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean . . . I mean, I guess this is all a lot. And I would . . . I would have done all that if I had thought of it. But I didn't.”

I swallow. Get myself under control. Stare at his hand. “I have been thinking lately that maybe there are just some things we can't explain,” I say. “That maybe when a lot of bad things happen, good things have to happen too.”

“Like magic?” He laughs, pulls his hand back, downshifts. “Come on, Lucille.”

“Like balance,” I say. I sound crazy. His face tells me so.

“Maybe,” he says, and when he shifts again, the outside of his hand brushes against mine. “Maybe so.”

He drops me off in front of Wren's school.

“So, we saw a woman wearing a postage stamp for a skirt, witnessed an almost-naked guy on a motorcycle, learned some history, ate some amazing food, and even went to a show, all in one day.” He leans back against his window, and the truck rumbles like it's tired of sitting here. “Not too shabby.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was good to get away.” The maintenance man, Mr. Bob, is out front pruning the bushes. I remember Mr. Bob. Nice guy. “It was a good day.”

“Sometimes it's hard to remember good days,” he says.

“For you?” I blurt. “How can that be? Perfect family, perfect academic record, perfect jock, perfect girlfriend.” I pull on my backpack. “Perfect face, perfect body.” I reach for the handle so I don't have to look at him.

I hear him sigh, though.

“So I'll see you in an hour?” he says.

“You will?”

“For Wren.”

“Oh, right,” I say. I have to work.

“So I'll see you soon.”

“Soon,” I say.

When I am out of the car and almost to the courtyard where the parents and babysitters wait for the kids, I turn back. I want to say thank you for a perfect day, not ten times but ten thousand.
One perfect day with you is all I needed right now, and you gave it to me. You told me I had dangerous ears. You bought me a sandwich. You asked if I'm all right. You traced my arm again, and for three minutes I thought you were in love with me.

But he's already gone. Still, I have a picture of me looking at him, and one of him looking at me. Two pictures just for me.

I am lost in a bubble, trying to remember specific things about this day, things I know I will want to be able to see clearly when I am lying alone in bed, later. Memories slip, you know, if you don't take the time to find a way to make them stay. How his shoulder blades jutted under his shirt in the back, how his hands shook for a second when he pulled the cash out of his wallet to pay for our sandwiches, how he paid really close attention to Mildred and said “Thank you, ma'am” when she showed us into Independence Hall. The music, the rush of it. His softer-than-I-thought fingers.

“How are things?” My across-the-street neighbor Andrew is in a houndstooth jacket, his nails clean, his eyes bright and shiny, a green umbrella in his hand.

I look up. Just the slightest chance of rain.

“Fine.” I like Andrew, so I make an effort. “Everything's good.”

“Good, good.” He taps his umbrella on the ground. It's so pretty. Sturdy and new-looking.

“How's Amelia?” She's his daughter.

“Oh, she's fine. The usual things. Piano today, homework, and early to bed, I think.” He runs a hand through his blond hair. Curls his mouth around clipped words, everything precise. “We're well into fall now, and it's time to get back to a routine.”

I start planning a routine in my head, remember everything Mrs. LaRouche said to me, remember everything.

Andrew is watching me, so I try to plug back into our conversation. “It's nice,” I say, “listening to Amelia practice piano through the window. She's really good.” It's not true. She's only a little bit good. She's also eight.

“When Amelia was born,” Andrew says, only partly to me, “we weren't sure whether or not she would have AIDS. Her mother had it, and it took us about a year before we knew for sure. She was also born addicted to crack. So the piano helps with her focus and concentration.”

“You knew she was sick and you took her anyway?” Andrew has never told me any of this before. I remember when he and Edwin adopted Amelia, brought her home wrapped in a blanket. It just goes to show you never know what's happening behind someone else's closed door.

“Absolutely,” he says. “We wanted a soul to take care of, and why not a soul in need?”

“Wow.”

“And so I told myself that I want her to be able to do one beautiful thing. Just one. Whatever it is. I chose piano for her because it keeps her hands busy and she has to practice every day, and it is the one thing I know how to give her.”

“One beautiful thing a day.”

“That's right.” He looks like he wants to say more, something about me, maybe, so I draw my hood up around my head and say, “I hope you guys have a good afternoon.”

“Making beautiful things,” he says, and winks.

“Right,” I say.

The next day, when Wren and I get home,
the leaves in the yard have been raked, the flowers watered, the two bushes pruned. Two pots of mums, one persimmon, the other yellow, have appeared on either side of my porch. I should be grateful, I know, but I am so pissed off, I can barely take it. I approach my house like the walkway is a landmine. Somewhere, Wrenny is bouncing around, ecstatic.

She
loves
the flowers!

She
adores
the grass!

And
Look! Look!
Someone left a basket of potpies by the door!

Potpies?
I think.
Are you freaking kidding me?

“Sweet,” I say, trying hard to stay steady. I grab the basket. My laser eyes settle on Andrew's house. This would be just like him, to be all perfect and Good Samaritanish, to notice more than he should. It must be him. But if he's milling about being a do-gooder, loading plants and food in and out of my house, someone is bound to notice, which means that it's just a matter of time before more people start asking questions.

I am just about to march across the street when I spy Andrew pulling up in his new Volvo station wagon. He gets out and pulls a Bergdorf Goodman bag from his car. He's dressed spiffy, as he is when he's been in New York. If he's been there all day, he couldn't possibly have done it. He looks my way and shoots me a thumbs-up.

“Nice work on the yard!” he says, with that combination of surprise and joy, like it's the oddest thing in the world that my yard would look pretty like everyone else's, but he's trying to be supportive. His hair is perfect even though a little wind is picking up. Soon it will be cold in earnest.

Who is doing this?

That night, after Wren falls asleep, I make my way into the attic. I generally stay away from that area. It's pretty grim. After Aunt Jan died and Mom was all swollen with Wren in her belly, she took everything but the furniture out of the house and shoved it up there. She never said anything, but I think she couldn't throw away Jan's belongings or give them away either. Right before she left, she did the same with Dad's stuff. All signs of him vanished.

Now that I think about it, that says a lot.

When I was little, I used to go up there by myself every once in a while, just to poke into my fears, I think. It creeped me out, and I liked being scared sometimes. I would go halfway up the stairs and imagine what might be lurking. A psycho-killer? A crazy lady ghost, with wild black hair and thin, cracked lips? Or spiders? A million-billion spiders just waiting to jump all over me and lay eggs in my face, hatch their babies all over.

Then I would flip on the lights, stare at all the boxes—nothing crawling anywhere, no threat. Just an alive sort of quiet, pregnant like Mom, filled up with something indefinable. Still, I could never quite get all the way up. I am remembering now what was under some of the tarps, and I want to get to it.

It takes me a minute to adjust to the light. Two of the fluorescent bulbs don't work anymore. All I see are outlines of boxes, and lots of guitars and basses. It's like I've got fingers in my chest pushing one by one, their tips trailing along my ribs, down my stomach. I'm doing something I'm not supposed to. I have entered the sarcophagus.

I don't remember much about my Aunt Jan. Nothing, actually, because I never met her. Mom left Cherryville as soon as she was old enough, headed to the West Coast. She says she followed the music. Their parents died in a fire, I guess, something tragic while on a vacation in the woods. Smoke inhalation. That was all Mom ever had to say on the subject. She would go glassy. Even in her softest hours, she drew some kind of invisible line at that story.

Mom had a picture of Aunt Jan that she kept on her shelf in the bathroom when I was really little and we still lived in California. At some point when she was pregnant with Wren and Aunt Jan was already dead, she told me that the baby and I would have exactly the same age-spread as she and her sister had. Seven years and three months apart. You have to wonder, don't you, about patterns like that?