Grady"s eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. She grated her teeth. "And when"s the last time you saw yours, Mary? Or your mother, for that matter? Huh, Miss Perfect? When?"
Mary stared, blinking, and tears filled her eyes.
3.
Robert had gone to her bedroom door, but Jenn had screamed at him to go away before he"d even knocked. Then she had suggested a specific destination.
Although he"d expected this reaction, he was deflated. G.o.d, but he wanted to see her. He couldn"t believe how her voice had changed, grown richer; he"d wanted to continue talking through the door just so he could hear her yell some more.
Coming down the stairs from her room, he wanted to weep. His body wouldn"t cooperate, so he was left with a hollow feeling, an emptiness. He retired to the couch by the front door, slumped and deafeated. he didn"t even hear Grady and Mary arguing on the porch.
After a few minutes, the girls came in. Grady didn"t so much as look in his direction, but turned into the kitchen. Mary watched her, smiled at her back, and came over to where he sat. "No luck?"
"Did you think I"d have any?"
She shook her head, sat beside him, patted his leg. "The couch okay?"
He smiled, surveyed her profile, thought better of contemplating her motivations again. She"s kind and gentle, he thought. And in today"s world . . . "The couch will be fine."
"Do you like chili?"
He grinned. It occurred to him that he hadn"t eaten in seven years.
She squeezed his knee, leaped up and looked back at him, her green eyes almost glowing through the dusk that permeated the room. "Glad you"re back. Maybe we can get to know each other this time." The look in her eyes was a strange one.
By midnight, Robert was alone on the couch.
Grady had given him the cold shoulder all night, and had gone up to her room early. By ten, the place was silent, and he and Mary had spent the next hour talking. He expected their conversation to take a weird turn at some point, for her to tell him how upset she was with him, but it never happened. Instead, she did her best to fill him in on the last seven years of his daughter"s life. She had also explained part of the reason she"d wanted to take care of his little girl: shortly before they"d left her parent"s home, she had suffered a miscarriage. Jenn had helped her heal.
There was less than he would have imagined. Jenn had had trouble adjusting to life up here, had gotten into sc.r.a.pes with schoolmates, but after a couple of years she"d settled in, though there were those times when Mary walked into her room only to catch her staring out her window, deep in thought or memory. Though she"d had more than her share of problems, by and large Jenn had done her best to play the hand that Robert had dealt her.
Later that night, he opened his eyes to the dark, craned his neck to see the clock. It was after three. He hadn"t been sleeping so much as resting his eyes. As the hours had pa.s.sed, his thoughts had blurred into half-dreams; his mind refused to shut off, so he opened his eyes, shoved his hands behind the pillow, stared at the ceiling, and tried to review his day, to ruminate on Mary, on his daughter, even on Grady, but his mind wouldn"t cooperate. It pulsed, beat like a heart, but wouldn"t really move. He was tired and overloaded.
Something moved on the stairs, and he nearly leapt off the couch. A shadowed figure crouched on them, one hand around the banister. She was crying.
"Jenn?" he whispered. His voice was throaty, unsure.
She continued to cry quietly while running a hand through hair much thicker than he would have imagined.
He waited. His heart pounded, his brow was hot with sweat, his palms damp. He ran them over the couch, waiting, his eyes on the shadows. When she moved, twitched even, he perked up. She wept, he waited.
After a time, she slapped her hand on the railing, pulled herself up. A bland light fell over her. She appeared pale. She"d died her hair black as a crow"s wings. Her ears were cl.u.s.tered in gold, and hoops hung from them. She wore a long black T-shirt that told of a concert she"d been to a year before. He didn"t recognize the band.
She approached him. He thought of standing, but wanted her to feel in control. She got closer than he"d thought she would, and they stared at each other. Slowly, she lowered herself onto the coffee table opposite him. She was wearing a musky perfume.
"Sorry about earlier," she said.
He propped his arms on his knees, clasped his hands, and told her, "Nothing to be sorry about. I owe you a world of explanation." His sheepish smile left him then, and he thought it possible he"d never felt so elated, so content, so happy, so present in a moment.
She stared at him a moment longer. "Let"s have it."
He laughed softly, looked away a second, and was startled to see Grady at the top of the stairs. Jenn turned.
"Hey, Grady, I-" she began, but Grady put a finger to her lips, shook her head.
"Do you hear that?" Grady whispered.
Robert"s eyebrows knitted and he strained his ears, but didn"t hear a thing.
Slowly, Grady descended the stairs. A baseball bat swung from her right hand, forward and back in a lazy arc.
"Did you see anything?" he asked.
"Thought I did. Maybe just a shadow."
"Do you always grab your baseball bat when you see or hear something in the middle of the night?"
"Yes, I do. Locals don"t creep around in the middle of the night. They know better. People around here carry guns, and they"ll shoot you in the a.s.s as soon as ask "May I help you?" They may ask you later what you were thinking, if you"re not dead, but by then you"re busy digging buckshot out of your spleen."
"I take it you don"t have a weapon."
She raised the bat, patted it in her palm. "This don"t count?"
Robert stood, nearly touched his daughter"s shoulder, but thought better of it. He neared the front door as Grady did, still not hearing anything, but there was something. It was the same feeling he got when he felt someone staring at him, the p.r.i.c.kling of hair and skin on the back of his neck. "What do you want to do?"
Grady gave him a look that told him she thought it was obvious. "You take one side, I"ll take the other."
"Happen to have another bat?"
Grady smiled, shook her head, swung open the door.
Behind him, Jenn cleared her throat. He turned, raised his eyebrows, and she said, "Don"t sweat it. This is a once-a-month thing."
"Oh, shut up," said Grady, pushing open the screen and stepping into the night.
Robert smiled at Jenn, followed Grady out, watched her go right while he went left, hugged the bushes that lined the house, p.r.i.c.king his ears for any strange sounds. Tall lights hung over the golf course, keeping everything bright. He didn"t see how anyone could sneak up on one of the houses, and from what Jenn had just said, the girl had a tendency to overreact.
Then Grady screamed.
He lifted his head, broke into a run, heard something boom against a wall, and she screamed again, a vicious, attacking yell, but then there was a huge crack and he didn"t know if it was bat against bone, or something else.
A shadow was standing over a bush, a foot twitching on the ground, and that was enough: Robert rammed into the shadow. They tumbled on the ground, rolling, and he clamped onto a hand just as the other hand slammed against his head. He ducked a second blow, wrenched the man"s wrist into his mouth and bit into the soft flesh under the palm, tore through tendon and skin, tasted the wet rush of blood as it gushed over his mouth and chin, sluiced down his neck and over his chest. He thought the man screamed, but then he was. .h.i.t again and he blacked out for a second and the guy was on him, hitting him with his good hand. Robert tasted more blood, knew it was his, brought his leg up, felt it connect solidly, and the man yelped, the wind rushing out of him. He rolled away, onto his feet, and the man took to his own, looking around for the baseball bat. But it was at Robert"s feet, where he grabbed it just as the man dove. There was a glimmer of steel, and Robert swung for all he was worth. A knife flew into the air, moonlight flashing on the blade as it spun. The man rolled over, clutching both hands now, and Robert swung again, connecting solidly with his back. The man slumped, looking back, but Robert had already ripped the bat through the air again. It caught him flush in the face and the man"s head twisted impossibly on his neck, blood scored into the air above him, and there was a terrible, final sigh, and then, for only a moment, the night was silent.
"Grady!" Jenn shrieked.
Robert spun toward the sound, and as soon as he saw Grady"s crumpled form he knew she was dead, or would be shortly. His heart sank as he edged over to the sprawled figure. The bush she"d fallen into scratched and clawed at his arms and chest, then across his face when he knelt.
Grady was gasping like a landed fish, her mouth popping open and shut. Her eyes were twitching, but seemed to land more often than not on him. The left side of her face was crushed. Robert tried to smile, and he thought she tried to contort her lips as well. Blood bubbled from them instead of a smile, and then her mouth opened wider, air rushed out, a hollow sound following.
"Take care of her," she moaned. Robert nodded, grabbed her hand, told her he would.
A horrible, plaintive scream split the night.
Mary pushed Jenn out of the way, shoved Robert to the ground, and collapsed over her friend.
Robert, his eyes wide, looked on, listened to Mary"s cries and Grady"s coughs, but then, adrenalin rocketing through him, his leg began to shake, and he thought, I"m in shock, then coherent thought fragmented and blew away.
Eventually, his body silenced.
Mary now held Grady"s inert body in her arms, rocking forward and back, moaning her friend"s name. Jenn stood over them, her face in her hands.
Robert lay on the ground, a few feet from the man he"d killed. Slowly, he gathered himself and took to his feet. The man"s face was partially shaded by the overhanging roof. Still, he looked somehow familiar. Staring dumbly, he stood over the corpse for a time, only peripherally aware that Mary and Jenn were quieting beside him; he followed the line of the man"s jaw, the crooked slit of his mouth, his open, sightless eyes . . . .
"Oh my G.o.d," he whispered, backed up, but kept his eyes on the face.
When you open a door, things can get out as well as in. They hunt you.
He turned to Mary, who was rising, her eyes red and puffy, her shirt soaked with Grady"s life.
"It"s my fault," he said, his heart slowly coming to his mind"s conclusion. "I"ve visited this on you." He began to cry, to wail in anger, in frustration, and after a time of this he remembered no more.
4.
"Is he up yet?" asked Jenn.
Mary shook her head.
"Okay," Jenn said, looking past her, out the window and into the mountains that divided the sky and looked, at this distance, like the humped back of a great animal.
They sat together on Mary"s bed. They hadn"t left each other since it had happened. It was near nightfall.
Mary hadn"t said much. After the police and doctors had left (and had drugged Robert, rendering him mute and unconscious), she and Jenn had retired to this room shortly after nine this morning. They"d fallen in and out of sleep the remainder of the day.
It was dusk now. The doctor had administered a sedative, and her head still felt fuzzy. "He might not come out of it until tomorrow," Mary told her, the first part of the sentence coming out dry and hoa.r.s.e, then flattening into the familiar tone of her voice. For some reason, she felt rea.s.sured by her ability to speak.
"I miss her," Jenn said.
"Shut up," snapped Mary, and it surprised her. She felt Jenn staring at her, felt the hurt. In seven years, she hadn"t so much as raised her voice.
For a while, they just looked at each other. Finally, Mary placed her hand on Jenn"s leg, whispered an apology, and fell back into the bed with a sigh. She began to cry and Jenn joined her. Mary wiped her eyes, and they were tender to the touch. She ran her hands through her hair instead, and found that her scalp was sore too.
"You hungry?" Jenn shrugged her shoulders, and Mary understood: It was strange to think of mundane facts of existence at a time like this. "Feel like pizza?"
Then Mary sensed a shadow in the doorway. She sat up, stiffened.
Robert stepped from the shadows, his hand out. "Sorry," he said. "I"m still woozy. Didn"t think to tell you I was here."
Mary was panting. "You scared the s.h.i.t out of me!"
"Please forgive me."
"It"s okay."
"Do you, uh, want me to order it?"
"What?"
"The pizza?"
"Oh. The pizza," she repeated.
And this was how it began.
5.
Two days later the three of them arrived at the service for Grady Melinda O"Malley. When Robert greeted Grady"s mother, she slapped him ferociously, hissing, "You found her all right."
With a hand on his red face and his head down, he made his way to the back. Mary touched his arm, feeling along it, and brushed her fingers over his hand. He turned to her, tried to smile. She leaned over, whispered, "It wasn"t your fault," and put her arms around him. Startled, he stiffened at first, and she let go just as he was getting used to it.
The church"s insides were bland, an everyday country meeting house, and the service itself was much like the church-it was conducted in the monotone of an aging Baptist preacher, a man whose Southern drawl was punctuated only by his p.r.o.nunciation of the deity: Gawd. Robert tried to tune him out, hoping to find in his heart an appropriate poetry to commemorate an extinguished life, but he found only words. He hadn"t known the life.
After the service, they drove to the cemetery. They entered between two marble angels, slowly made their way toward a semi-circle of black coats and dry, open umbrellas, pa.s.sing slabs of stenciled marble and granite, upright and rowed like teeth. A drab voice fought against the wind, dispensing the old myths of gold-paved streets and angels floating in the mist. Robert slowed, glanced around and thought of the land of stone that centered an unfinished world. He didn"t believe it, but couldn"t un-believe it either: He remembered it. But even his memory didn"t rea.s.sure him. Some said that memory was not like the present moment. Some said memory was just a form of beginning.
They strode down a gra.s.s aisle, and Mary took his hand, holding it tight until the minister finished his incantation for the living, the hope that death was not the end of the I, the dream of a body-less, freed consciousness roaming the edges of Man"s existence.