In All Deep Places (9 page)

A little after three o’clock, at my direction, the four of us headed back to town. As we came back into city limits, I suddenly remembered it was the day before the Wooden Shoes Festival. On impulse I led the others down Main Street instead of Seventh Avenue. The city square would be bustling with preparations for tomorrow. Maybe we could stop by the newspaper office and get money from my dad for some funnel cakes. The funnel-cake guy always opened a day early. Maybe we could watch the Ferris wheel get put together, or maybe the petting-zoo people had arrived and maybe they would need help getting the goats and miniature horses and baby deer out of their trailers. Maybe the wood-carvers who made the wooden shoes would let them help them unload their truck for a few dollars.

I just didn’t want to go home yet. I wanted to be some
where where things were happening. Good things. I didn’t want to go home and see the snot-colored house I lived next door to. I didn’t want to hear Nell’s voice or Darrel’s voice or smell their cigarettes. I didn’t want to think about scary men in jail or high rocks or deep places where you can’t see the bottom.

And for some reason I couldn’t quite make sense of, I didn’t want Norah or Kieran to have to go back to that snot-colored house right then, and to whatever awaited them inside it.

Later that evening, after my parents and Ethan had returned from the Miss Halcyon Pageant—I flat-out refused to go with them—and after Ethan had gone to bed and my parents had begun
to watch the ten o’clock news, I slipped out my window and climbed into the tree house. I brought the little battery-powered camping lantern my dad had bought for me at the hardware store
and my notebook. I wanted to write a story about a man who got sent to jail for something he didn’t do but no one would believe him.

I scooted across the floor of the tree house to my favorite
corner and set the lantern down. I opened the notebook and turned to a fresh page and started to write:

In his dreams the man always walked out of the courthouse in a suit while he laughed and shook hands with people, but when he awoke the man was always lying in a jail cell, wearing an orange jumpsuit—

A commotion outside interrupted me. A door had opened.
Nell’s back door. Darrel was yelling. It sounded like he was on the phone. He said Belinda’s name. Then he yelled Belinda’s name. The door closed and the yelling became muted. Somewhat. I could
still make out some of the words. Most of them were words I was
forbidden to say. I peered out an opening and saw that Norah
was sitting on Nell’s back step.

My movement startled her, and she looked up at me. In the dusky moonlight and the yellow glow of Nell’s back-porch light,
I could see she was crying. I thought perhaps she would
look away or walk away when she saw me looking at her. But she just stared at me with those ancient eyes of hers. I didn’t know
why—I certainly never would have been able to explain it to anybody—but I held up my hand to her, fingers curled down except for my pointer finger,
with
which I
pointed to the plywood ceiling above me. It was an invitation to join me in the tree house. My place of escape.

For a second, Norah did nothing. Then she nodded once and got to her feet. She walked barefoot across the little adjoining lawn
and began to climb up the wooden planks nailed to the trunk.

She emerged from the opening in the floor and hoisted herself inside, looking around, taking in the view. Two camping stools were in one corner along with a box of comic books and Ethan’s Hush Puppies shoebox of Creepy Crawlers. I was in another
corner, sitting on the floor with an old sofa cushion behind my
back. An old cigar box was on the floor by my feet, and the lantern
sat between us. Norah took a seat on one of the stools and dried her cheeks with her hand.

Neither one of us said anything.

“I like to come in here to write,” I finally said.

“To write? What do you write?” she asked softly.

“Stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

I paused for a moment. “Stories about places I’d like to go, or things I’d like to do. Or things I hope I never have to do.”

“Is that what you’re doing right now?” she said, looking at my
notebook open on my lap. “Writing a story?”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“You want to write something? I can give you some paper,” I said.

“What would I write about?”

Luke shrugged his shoulders. “Anything you want.”

“I like to write poems,” Norah said.

“Then write a poem.” I tore out a piece of paper
and handed it her. I pulled a pencil out of the old cigar box and handed that to her, too. “You can use Ethan’s shoebox to write on.”

Norah picked up the Hush Puppies shoebox and put it on her lap, laying the piece of paper on the lid. She cocked her head and squinted: the look of someone searching for an idea.

I went back to my own paragraph about the man in the jail
cell. A few seconds later I heard the sound of Norah s pencil on
paper.

“What rhymes with water?” she said a few seconds later.

I tapped my cheek with my pencil. “Daughter?” I said.

She considered it. “Yeah. That works.”

The next day, Norah and Kieran sat with my family and I during the parade that marched past the Janvik and Foxbourne houses an
hour before sunset. Nell and Darrel had left—without saying much
of anything—to head to the bar in Carrow, the
next town over, where nothing special at all was happening that night. If my parents and I had been able to read Nell Janvik’s mind we would have understood she could no longer watch the
Wooden Shoes Festival Parade because army veterans bearing the American flag always led the way and she could no longer bear to look at a man in an army uniform. Not after what had happened
to Kenny. But we weren’t mind readers, of course, so Nell and Darrel’s casual way of leaving Norah and Kieran with
us, without really asking, was looked upon with astonishment.

Two days later, while the carnival workers packed away the Tilt-a-Whirl and the carousel five blocks away, Darrel loaded up his car. I heard the sound of car doors opening and closing as I ate my breakfast, and I went and looked out the screen door, watching as Darrel prepared to go back to California. Norah came out of Nell’s house then with a grocery bag and a pillow, and she put these in the car. She looked over at my house right then and saw me standing there. She held up her hand and kept it still. She was
saying goodbye. I held up my hand, too.

T
he summer I turned fourteen, my father declared I
was old enough to earn money at the
Halcyon Herald.
Real money—not a dollar here and there for running this ad copy over to the co-op, or that missing issue to the nursing home. I fi
nally got to write my name on a yellow time card, and Lucie, the office manager, showed me how to punch it so the time landed on
the line it was supposed to.

That summer, I learned how to use the Nikon 35mm
camera and how to develop film in the darkroom. I also began to
write the simplest of news stories, like announcements of concerts
in the park and diabetes support-group meetings and benefit auctions for good causes. I proved to be dependable and thorough,
as many firstborns typically are, but there was an unspoken agree
ment between father and son, and though it was never mentioned audibly, both understood it. The agreement was this: Working at the paper did not mean I wanted a career in journalism. I was sure I did not, and I suppose my Dad hoped in time maybe I would change
my mind.

When school began that fall, I had to cut back on my hours, but I spent two or three afternoons a week at the paper,
doing what I could in between basketball practice and spending
time with Matt. My friendship with Matt was changing as the years progressed: Matt was becoming more and more the superstar athlete, and I was becoming more and more the studious academic. Matt was a starter for the junior-varsity basketball squad, and sometimes suited up for varsity games. I sat on the bench most games and played only when a twenty-point spread at the two-minute mark assured a win. Our ideas of good entertainment were changing, too. Matt was a frequent guest at upperclassmen’s parties and had already admitted to experimenting with alcohol. I was not extended those same invitations, nor did I want them. I felt torn between my loyalty to Matt as a friend and my own desire not to mess things up for myself.

When the basketball season was over, I saw less and less of Matt; we no longer had sleepovers, of course, and playing tricks on Nell had also lost its appeal. And Matt had a bigger circle of friends than I did. We were still good friends, but we were growing apart, and we knew it.

Knowing this made me long to find respite in the tree house. It was almost exclusively mine now, as Ethan had long since lost interest. But when basketball ended in March, snow still covered the ground, and the limbs of the tree outside my window were often still glazed with ice. I had made a cubby of sorts for myself in the attic, but I found I could not write there. The chill of the unheated room was the smaller of two distractions; the inability to look out a window was the larger one.

In late April, the last of the snow melted away, and the earth renewed itself as it always does. And I began to climb into the tree house again, to escape and to dream.

The day after my fifteenth birthday, on the last day of school, I came home to find an old Chevy pickup truck with a beige camper shell parked in Nell Janvik’s driveway. Somehow I knew as I neared my house that the pickup would have California plates. I was right.

Darrel was back.

There was no one in the Janvik yard, no sounds coming from
the open windows. Darrel had probably arrived several hours ago, and the hoopla or the hullabaloo over his return, whichever it
had been, was long over. I walked into my house wondering if Darrel had brought his kids with him. I grabbed a Pepsi from
the fridge and a bag of Fritos and headed upstairs to my room. I
didn’t have to work at the paper that day, and Ethan was helping our mother clean out her classroom for the year, so I had the
house to himself.

My room was stuffy inside from the early June heat, and I
opened the window before I plopped down on my bed. I drank
the soda and munched on the Fritos, all the while contemplating the long, lazy summer that awaited me. Then I heard the sound of a child crying. It was a mad cry. The cry of someone who had not gotten his way. It was coming from one of Nell’s upstairs windows. I turned my head toward the sound.

“Will you just go out to the camper and get it!” a man’s voice
yelled. He cursed the camper as he bellowed. Darrel.

Cautiously, I got off my bed and walked over to the window. I could hear Nell’s front door opening but couldn’t see who was coming out. Then from under the cover of the porch roof, a teenage girl with honey-blonde hair emerged. She stepped barefoot onto the grass between Nell’s house and her driveway. Even from the
back I could see it was Norah.

She opened the back door of the camper, went inside and then came back out with a stuffed toy dinosaur. When she turned I
could see her face. She had matured in the last three years. She
looked up then at my tree house—looking for me, it seemed—
and then her eyes
naturally traveled to my bedroom window. There would be no point in moving away. She had already seen me. The corners of her mouth raised a fraction of an inch, and she cocked
her head slightly. She raised one hand and kept it still, just like she
had three years ago when she was ten and I was twelve and she
had said goodbye. This time, however, it was hello.

I raised my hand in return.

She paused for a moment, like she was considering coming to
me, climbing my tree, ambling across the branch that led to my room, and filling me in on the last three years. But then she turned
back toward the house, went inside, and all grew quiet again.

That night just after supper, my parents started talking about Darrel’s return. Dad was still at the table with Ethan and me. Mom was at sink starting to fill the sink with soapy water.

“I see Darrel is back,” my dad said.

“Yes.”

“Are the kids and Belinda with him?”

“I don’t know.”

I knew.

“The kids are with him. I don’t think Belinda is,” I said
. My parents seemed surprised I knew.

“Did you see them?’ my mother asked.

“Saw one. Heard the other one,” I rose and took my plate to the sink.

“Can I go to Ryan’s tonight?” Ethan said, oblivious to the
human drama next door and taking his plate to the sink also.

“I guess so,” my mother said. “We can take you over there on our way to the Nelsons’ if you want. Luke, you have somewhere you want to go tonight? Do you mind being home alone?”

Matt had asked me to come to a last-day-of-school party at one of his new friend’s houses that night, but I knew there was going to be a keg there. I had declined, feigning family obligations.

“I’m fifteen. I can handle being alone.”

“Okay. Just making sure.”

Forty-five minutes later the house was quiet. I went downstairs into the basement, where it was perpetually cool, but there was nothing good on TV. I came back up to my room, climbed out the window, and scooted along the branch to the tree house. I
would listen for sounds from Nell’s house so that the next time my
parents speculated about the goings-on there, I would be able to clue them in. If nothing happened, I would write.

I stretched out along the floor and peeked through open
spaces in the roof. Stray starlight, filtering through the branches,
greeted me. It was a beautiful evening.

I had been there for maybe ten minutes when I heard noise
at the front door of Nell’s house. I turned my head, and through a gap, I saw Nell and Darrel walk over to the camper. They did not go in. They started to talk. Then I heard Nell’s back door open slowly, and by moving my body slightly I could see that Norah had quietly slipped out onto the back step just below me. She sat down and hugged her knees, leaning forward. It was ob
vious she wanted to hear what her father and grandmother were talking about.

“I think I have a right to know what is going on!” Nell said.

Norah had raised her head. I shifted his weight so I could see Nell and Darrel better. The floorboards creaked. I knew then that she knew I was there. Norah knew I was there.

“Is she in jail again?” Nell.

“Ma, it’s worse than that.”

There was a pause.

“Well?”

“Well, first she split on me, Ma,” Darrel said. He sounded
angry. “She left me and the kids and moved down to Mexico with some guy. I told her I wouldn’t let her take the kids, and at first
she didn’t care. She didn’t care! A couple months later when she decided she did want them, I hid them from her. She was high on something and pulled a knife on me, but I wouldn’t tell her where
they were. Well, she went back to Mexico anyway, and she and this guy got messed up in some drug deal and a Mexican cop got shot.
I think she’s in jail down there. Some friends told me she’s being charged as an accessory to murder.”

I sensed my heart beating faster. I knew Norah was hearing all of this, probably for the first time. I crept to my knees and looked at her, staying back as far as he could. Even shadowed in twilight, her eyes
were huge, vacant, wet. She held a slender
hand over her mouth.

“So what’s going to happen?” Nell said after a long pause.

“She’s going to rot in a Mexican prison, that’s what! She and that loser she left me for.”

Norah’s eyes
were closed now, and she was slowly rocking back
and forth, but making no sound. Her grandmother and father
hadn’t a clue they were being overheard. I had an insane desire
to slide down the rope and beat the heck out of Darrel Janvik.

“So what have you told these kids?” Nell said softly. There was
the slightest hint of compassion in her voice.

“I told them she ran away. I told them, when she gets tired of running she’ll come back.”

“That’s a bunch of bull.”

“No, it ain’t! She did run away. She ran away from me, and she
ran away from them.”

Nell was silent for a moment.

“She loves those kids, Darrel. She loves them, and you know it.”

More silence.

“Yeah… well, she loves her heroin more, and
you
know it.”

“She doesn’t love it more, she
needs
it more. She was a prisoner
long before she got put in a Mexican jail.”

“And whose fault is that? Huh? Whose fault is that!” Darrel yelled. “I been clean for ten years, Ma! Ten years! She wouldn’t stay
off it. She wouldn’t.”

“Hush! You want the kids to hear you?”

“I’ve just had it with her, Ma. I’ve had it. I’m not going back to
California. And I don’t care if she’s in prison for two months or two years or the rest of her life, she’s never going to get these kids.”

“So you want to punish her.”

“She’s not getting these kids.”

I could hear Nell sigh.

“So how long are you stayin?”

“For good, Ma. I’m gonna get me a job at the paint factory and get a little house on a few acres, and I’m gonna make a good life for
Norah and Kieran here. And you’ll get to watch ’em grow up, Ma.
You can see ‘em on their birthdays and at their school functions and on Christmas morning. I just need a place to stay until I can
afford a place of my own. Just till then.”

“You get a job here and you better find a way to keep it, Darrel. They won’t give you more than one chance at the factory. You better
not blow it.”

“I won’t!”

I kept my eyes
on Norah as Nell and Darrel moved on to less explosive matters. I watched her try to gather her composure,
watched her dry her cheeks. She stood and then turned toward
me, seeking my gaze. I moved so she could see me fully. I
wanted to communicate to her somehow that I felt awful for her,
that I knew how badly she must be hurting. But to say anything aloud would reveal us both. So I just looked at her, hoping she
could tell I felt sorry for her.

She looked at me for only a second before she turned and quietly slipped back into the house.

The following morning—my first full day of summer vacation—I woke up late. I came downstairs at ten-thirty to
find my parents already deeply immersed in the Saturday rituals
of yard work and laundry. Ethan had stayed the night at his friend Ryan’s house. I ate a quick breakfast and then headed back to
my room to dress and make my bed. I was supposed to wash both cars today, and I wanted to get them done before I called Matt
to see if he wanted to go to Goose Pond that afternoon. It was one of the few things we still enjoyed doing together.

I stepped outside into the shimmering June heat, grabbing
my father’s car keys. I got into my dad’s classic Dodge Dart,
eased it out of the garage, and then grabbed the nearby bucket, sponge, and detergent kept inside. I squirted the detergent into the bucket, filled it with water from the hose, and then brought it and the running hose over to the car. I sprayed the vehicle, humming a Three Dog Night song while I squirted. When I turned the hose off, I noticed a boy with dark curly hair watching me.
Kieran Janvik.