Hush (9 page)

as light sockets. Celia was five years old. She stood in the kitchen and stared

up at that angry face.
"Around and around we go, where we stop nobody knows...right, Cel?"
Celia turned away.
"Put out your hands," her mother said.
Celia couldn't move her arms; fear soldered them to her sides.
"Put...them...out...and...look...at...me." Her mother's voice sounded strained

and low, like the rumbling of a dump truck as its bed is raised inch by inch,

until the whole dirty load starts to slide.
Celia's hands shook, and she extended them slowly as she raised her eyes to her

mother. She felt tight and cold— all of her— like something that freezes in the

night.
"Scared? Are you scared?" Her mother's face was as tense as iron.
"Yes, Mommie," Celia cried.
"But you weren't scared before, were you?" Her voice sounded tortured, anger

like a well that falls into darkness forever.
"No, Mommie." Celia's sisters watched, eager and scared too; and glad they had

been spared...for now. Their mother had taught them the basics of the jungle:

that while she preyed on you she couldn't prey on them; playing them off one

against the other, dividing and conquering the kingdom of childhood.
"Well...you...should...have...been." And then she took the big wooden spoon and

smashed its hard oval face across Celia's knuckles. The pain made her scream,

and she pulled her hands to her chest.
"What...did...I...say?" That voice again. "I...said...put ...them...out. And

don't you dare scream."
"Mommie," Celia pleaded with her eyes closed, her whole body shaking.
"Don't stamp your feet or I'll crack them too. How would you like that?"
Celia tried to still her body.
"Are you listening?"
"Yes, Mommie."
"I...don't...see...them."
"What, Mommie?"
"Don'tplaygameswithme." She spit those words out in a fury. "Youknowwhat." And

then the spoon struck Celia's cheek and jaw, and her eyes blinked open as

betrayal clawed another hole in the cheesecloth of her childhood.
"Your...hands."
Celia looked up. Her mother was a big woman, bigger than her youngest daughter

would ever be, and she held that spoon like a club. Celia could feel a burning

pain as her tears washed the cut that had just appeared on her cheek.
"You want me to do that again? Do you?"
"No, Mommie." Celia shook her head back and forth frantically.
"Then...put...your...hands...out."
And Celia had tried, as a child does, to figure out which was worse— the hands

or the face. Slowly, she lifted her red hands, which had already begun to swell,

and closed her eyes.
"Around and around we go, where we stop, nobody knows."
She had only a dusty memory of her father, and she had never been certain

whether it was real or borrowed from an old photograph. He was a broad man

leaning against a scrawny tree with a fedora tilted rakishly over his forehead,

and he'd had a big smile, the kind that creases an entire face. But she

concluded long ago that he must have been terribly unhappy because he walked out

on his family two weeks before Celia's third birthday and they never heard from

him again. Her mother said he was a vicious alcoholic who had beaten her

repeatedly before finally leaving. Looking back, Celia thought violence had

moved through her family like the flu, targeting the weak, leaving them weaker.
The fatherless family moved from house to house until they settled in a suburb

on the south shore of Long Island. But this home proved no happier than the

others, and by the time Celia entered high school she had already made plans to

leave as soon as she turned eighteen. You have to be hard enough to survive, she

told herself back then, and soft enough to make it worth your while. It was more

wisdom than some people acquired in a lifetime.
On the very morning of her eighteenth birthday she fled with a suitcase and a

knapsack. It was all she could carry; it was all she wanted of her life till

then. She left behind her rosary and holy medals and the memory of saints' days

and observances. She took a train to Chicago, a city large enough to hide in,

and far enough away to make even a casual contact unlikely. For six years she

did not communicate with her mother. She came to understand the cruelty of this

and wrote her a brief note saying she was alive and well. Celia did not intend

for it to start a correspondence or lead to a reunion, and it did neither.
Her mother died three years ago. Jack persuaded Celia to visit her after she

entered the hospital for the last time. Her colon cancer had advanced to its

final stages. She was days away from death, and looked weary of life. Her

shrunken head sank heavily into a white pillow. Celia saddened when she saw her

from the doorway, and she filled with feeling for her mother, but no

reconciliation took place. Her mother's old anger hadn't died: it had just grown

older and angrier.
"Saint Cecilia," she summoned the energy to announce when Celia walked in the

room. A second bed was empty, and the television droned on: a game show, a low

hum that remained faithful in the background— occasional laughter, moans,

voices, clanging bells.
Saint Cecilia. The same scornful voice that Celia had heard throughout her

childhood, the one that haunted her still. When she heard those words she knew

the anger could not be far behind.
"You're so nice to everyone, aren't you? But your family? No, we're not good

enough for you. We're not worth your precious time, are we, dearie? I guess we

don't pay you enough, like those kids."
Celia could have fainted. All that hate, all those years. Even now. Her belly

washed with blood, the way it did in moments of great fear. Her two sisters—

older, married, mothers themselves— stood looking down silently. This had been

too much even for them, family loyalists till the end.
"Oh, you're a cold fish, and don't think I didn't know it from the get-go."
Hate dribbled from her deathbed lips, and Celia slipped out of the room after

her mother turned away. She had always needed someone to hate, and Celia had

always been that someone.
But why me? She had asked herself that question so many times, and at the

hospital she finally wondered if she'd been the result of rape: her father

forcing his way in, bringing his seed to life with a drunk's bludgeoning

indifference.
Marion, her oldest sister, had followed Celia down the hallway.
"I'm so sorry, Cel." Marion's eyes had teared.
"That's okay. I really didn't expect much. I mean, people don't change, right?

They just become more of whatever they are."
But Marion stiffened, because Marion's mother was different from Celia's: same

blood, but a different woman. They'd had two mothers: one kind enough to instill

Marion's loyalty, and one cruel enough to have driven Celia away.
"Look, I've got to get out of here. It's killing me." She started crying then,

and Marion had put her arms around her little sister and held her.
Their mother's death came two days later. At the funeral Mass Celia found that

the stained-glass saints still separated the sunlight into beams of color, and

the pungent odor of frankincense still filled the air; but the service itself

had changed, infused with a warmth she did not remember from childhood.
The priest's voice echoed in the mostly empty church. Her mother had had no

friends. Marion, her husband, Jim, and their children, Beth and Steven, occupied

the first row. Sharon joined them. She was the tallest of the three sisters and

had always been less tolerant of Celia's deviations. Celia sat behind them in a

pew by herself.
The priest referred to her mother as a loving parent, and as a child of God

called home. Later Celia watched the casket being lowered into the earth, and

then Marion and Jim had taken her back to the airport.
No, Celia didn't think she was a fighter. She had fled the quiet crime of her

childhood.
So I guess I'm into flight, she decided once again. It was the same verdict

she'd reached during the training session. But as she sat at her desk waiting

for Davy Boyce and his stepfather, she thought for the first time that maybe

running away wasn't cowardly. What else could you have done? It's stupid to

think you were a coward. It's more of that macho crap everyone grows up with,

boys and girls all believing there's a moment of truth that defines us; the guys

thinking they've got to be John Wayne, and all of us girls believing they have

to be too, and now pretty much believing it for ourselves— another hand-me-down

myth from men.
Moment of truth. Celia shook her head derisively. As if a single moment could

define us. That's so ridiculous.
She laid the Boyce file on her desk and noticed the first page was damp from

where her fingers had been squeezing it. She checked her watch. A little after

nine. Father and son would be here soon enough. Renata's voice nibbled at the

crust of her consciousness one more time.
"But no matter what you are— a fighter, or someone who runs away— the blood will

come rushing from your brain to your organs, and your reasoning power will be at

its lowest. So you want to know long before a client attacks you, What am I

going to do? How am I going to react? You have to have a personal plan. That's

very important."
All right, Celia asked herself. What'll I do if he bites me? You know, when the

blood starts running out of my brain into his mouth. She shook her head— she'd

have to think about it some more— and skimmed the rest of the three-page file,

but there wasn't much to know beyond the fact that the boy was an elective mute

and a biter.
She went over to her shelf of art supplies and picked up a box of felt-tipped

markers and brought them over to the worktable. From a higher shelf she pulled

down blank sheets of paper and grabbed a lead pencil. She studied the sharp

point before deciding against giving him a potential weapon.
She reminded herself to keep her tone neutral during the evaluation. No matter

what happened, she knew she had to maintain a calm demeanor when she had him do

the drawings. And who knew, maybe everything would go just fine.
And if he bites you? The question returned, as persistent as rust or rot or

anything that refused to relent.
She looked at her bare arms. Move in, roll down. The teeth, after all, came with

the turf.
13
Chet loaded his chain saw into the bed of his pickup, back with the bark dust

and dirt. He figured he'd need it sometime today. First he had to go in with

Davy, meet this Mrs. Griswold, and find out what they were up to. He didn't like

having to take him to that place for fucked-up kids, but he couldn't just up and

leave. Money was too goddamn tight. How far could he go? He'd spent what he had

to get here. So he'd take him in, play the game. The kid wouldn't say anything.

This was one boy he didn't have to worry about. And when he was through with

them and their questions— they always had questions, nosy motherfuckers— he'd

put his chain saw to work. He kept it back there pretty much most of the time.

You had to strike when the iron was hot— he knew this to be a fact— and it

seemed like every time he got lazy and left his saw behind, he'd run across a

whole bunch of windfall just waiting to be taken. It was true in Idaho, probably

was here too. Wood was getting up there, and you could always find somebody to

buy it. Look at that old man Marshall, paid $110 for a cord, and not even a full

one at at that. Old fool couldn't tell.
Hell, when the timber companies cut, they'd leave behind a whole field of

stumps, some of them three, four feet high. That was a hell of a lot of wood

waiting to be taken, just like the fruit hanging from those trees all over the

valley, though wood didn't pay nearly as good as fruit, and Chet knew this to be

another one of those goddamn facts that hurt like a sore toe. Those orchard guys

made out okay. They must. More tax breaks than an oil well. He'd heard that the

other day and had no reason to doubt it, not with the way they drove around in

those fancy fucking trucks.
Doing a lot better than the loggers. No jobs with the timber companies. From the

sound of it things had got so bad, some of the owners were back out felling

trees themselves. If they didn't need you and there wasn't much work to go

around, they had two strikes against you before you ever got to take a swing at

a tree.
But Chet knew he'd make out okay. He had his trailer. He even had a woodstove

rigged up. Did that last year, opened the side of it. Just like peeling off the

top of a tin can. One minute the silver wall was just shiny and saying "No,

don't touch me,"and the next it was hanging open and he could see the insides,

the carpet and the bottom of a cabinet, the one with his tools. It made him

think about things. It did.
But that stove was hell to haul around, and he never did get it to vent right.

It got smoky every time he used it. Smoke drifted out so slow you couldn't even

see it, just smell it, like someone was spraying acid up your nose. Chet knew

he'd have to get that stove figured out soon. This weather wouldn't keep.
He looked around for Davy. Called him five minutes ago and told him to get

moving. He hated to run late, hated it. Made him feel... inferior. And it was

ten after nine. Shit, where the hell...there he is. Already in the damn cab.

Doesn't talk and moves like an Indian. Kid will be a good hunter when I teach