Lovely Wild (17 page)

THIRTY-SIX

THE MASTER BATH
renovation was done well. It has a shower better than the one in the hall bath and a vintage-looking claw-foot tub that’s probably a reproduction. Mari fills it and adds a foaming bath cube Ethan bought her from the school’s holiday shop last Christmas and which had been packed, forgotten, in her travel bag for months. It doesn’t smell very good, too much like chemicals to her sensitive nose, but it gives the water a luxurious and silky feel she’s completely enjoying.

She’s not much of a bath person, normally. Mari likes showers because they are quick and efficient, allowing her to get clean in the least amount of time possible so she can move on to other things. Like many other memories she’s shoved aside and which are now rising inexorably toward the front of her mind, she thinks now of how she used to fight the bathtub. She sinks down in the water now, remembering strong hands holding her as other hands scrubbed her hair and pulled the tangles free. She remembers screaming.

It seems so silly now. Her own children had never fought the tub—they loved it, in fact. They’d play for an hour in the water, dipping it into cups and floating boats. Splashing. They’d never even complained when she got soap in their eyes.

A stack of magazines she found in the living room cupboard sits next to the tub. It’s an odd collection.
Doll Collector. Archery Hunter. Civil War Stories.
Whoever lived here before sure had varied tastes.

Mari doesn’t collect anything, but the doll magazine fascinates her. Settling into the steaming water, she flips through page after page of dead-eyed dolls. There’s another toy on the page. Soft body, hard plastic head like the others, but this doll isn’t in the shape of a person. It’s a worm with a green body and a nightcap on its head.

She knows this toy. Her children had toys like this, but she’s remembering something else. Something like it, not the same...something she had held tight against her to light up the night until one day, it went dark and never shone again. Mari closes her eyes.

Did she have a toy like this? Maybe not exactly the same, but close enough that she can still recall the feel of its soft body, the hard box inside it, the plastic face. Her fingers squeeze the magazine, mindless of how she’s crumpling it.

“For you.” The forest prince has brought her a present. “For when it’s dark. So you don’t have to be afraid.”

Mari squeezes it close, watching it light up. She strokes the soft body, the hard head. She looks at him. “Butterfly.”

“Shh,” he reminds her, and forms her fingers into the motions of a butterfly, fluttering. “Remember. Quiet. So they won’t hear you.”

They’d convinced her it was imagination. That only Gran had been in the house with her. No matter how many times she’d tried to describe or explain him, nobody had believed her.

Mari looks to the bathroom window, to the darkness outside. Then again to the picture in this magazine. She hadn’t imagined that glowing butterfly doll. That doll had been real. So then, had the boy who gave it to her been real, too?

For the first time in years, she thinks he was.

She hears the click-click of claws on the tiles. Chompsky sits, head cocked, to look at her. He pants, smiling, and she thinks how much she’s come to love this dog even in the short time he’s been theirs.

She hadn’t loved her gran’s dogs. They smelled bad, barked too much. They bit. They stole food from her hands if she wasn’t careful. They weren’t pets the way Chompsky is, and yet she can’t keep herself from thinking about those dogs from the past any more than she can stop the rush and press of all the other memories coming back to her.

The bath holds no more interest for her. She’s not sure what prompted her to think she wanted one in the first place, except that it’s what women are supposed to do when they want to relax. Now her skin’s crawling from the bubbles and her stomach’s upset from the heat. She runs the shower, cold, and stands beneath it shivering. Mari tilts her face to the water and opens her mouth to wash away the taste of the past, but it takes a long, long time.

THIRTY-SEVEN

KENDRA HATED GROCERY
shopping, but when Mom had asked if she and Ethan wanted to come along, Kendra had jumped at the chance, especially when Mom promised lunch. Fast food was always a treat because Mom hated the taste of what she called “fake” burgers. And after Kendra had watched that documentary by the guy who ate at McDonald’s every single day she’d been a little scarred herself.

She hadn’t counted on the fact that they really were out in BumFuck. No McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Wendy’s. Kendra groaned as her mom drove slowly along one of the main roads in town.

“How about here?” Her mom pulled into the parking lot of a long, low building with a big red rabbit on the sign. “Look. It says ‘make the red rabbit a habit.’ Cute, huh? They have ice cream. And onion rings.”

Kendra had never wanted greasy fries and a strawberry shake so much in her life. Ethan was already bouncing up and down in the backseat, begging for chicken strips. Inside the place looked like something out of an old movie. Diner booths, a jukebox, old records on the walls. Her mom laughed in delight, looking around. Ethan jumped over to the jukebox. Kendra studied the menu. A buck fifty for a Hollywood Burger? Where were they, the Twilight Zone?

Kendra looked across the room at the counter, the bored teenager working there, and was sort of jealous. At least
that
kid had a job, earned some money, probably had friends to hang out with. When she got back to Philly, Kendra was going to be broke and behind on all the gossip.

She probably
was
the gossip.

“Help you?” asked the guy behind the counter without even glancing at her.

Great. Now she was such a nonperson even pimple-faced fry jockeys didn’t bother to check her out. She might as well get the upsized, triple-burger meal with bacon and some fried pie for dessert. So what if her face broke out and she gained, like, fifty pounds just by breathing the smell of it? Clearly she wasn’t worth paying attention to.

Her mom was placing the order, one item at a time, carefully, the way she always did. It could be infuriating how she took her time, reading each item off the menu, but when Kendra glanced away from the plaques shellacked with newspaper articles featuring the Red Rabbit, the cashier didn’t look annoyed. If anything, he was even slower to ring up the items than her mom was saying them. Kendra sighed. So much for “fast” food.

“Ellie? Ellie Pfautz?” the manager asked from behind the counter.

The manager looked to be about four feet tall, with a stringy gray ponytail sprouting from under her baseball cap and—gross—a mouth full of crooked, jutting teeth. At least the ones that weren’t missing. Kendra looked behind her to see if the woman was talking to someone, but there was nobody there.

“No, it can’t be.” The woman shook her head as she eyed Kendra. “But you look just like her.”

“I’m not from around here,” Kendra said.

“Kiki, what do you want to drink?” her mom asked, and the manager turned to her.

“Oh, my God,” the manager said. “Oh, my God.”

The restaurant hadn’t been full when they’d come in. Maybe eight or ten people in the booths, another three behind her mom in line. It seemed like every head turned at the sound of the manager’s voice. Kendra’s mom looked around, then at the woman.

“I’m...sorry?”

The manager looked back and forth from Kendra to her mom, then again. “Oh, my God. It’s...you look just like Ellie did,” she said to Kendra. “And that’s your mom, huh? You’re her mom?”

“I’m her mother, yes.”

Kendra’s stomach was twisting with unease—it was probably never a good thing to be singled out in a backwoods burger joint by the manager who sounded like she’d just accidentally put her fingers in the fryer. But her mom was calm, her voice cool and only a little curious. She’d clutched her purse closer to her side and reached for Ethan’s hand to pull him close, too, but that was the only sign she gave that anything might be wrong.

“And you’re the one who...” The manager shook her head as if in disbelief. “Your mother, was she Ellie Pfautz?”

Kendra’s mom took two steps back from the counter. Now everyone was definitely looking at them. Kendra’s mom saw it, too, her gaze sweeping the place, skating over Kendra, before settling back on the manager.

“Yes?” She sounded uncertain.

The manager moved closer, each step shuffling and awkward as she heaved the weight of her body from side to side. “I knew your mother.”

Kendra’s mom made a small, helpless noise.

“She worked here.” The woman had a sort of gleeful and horrified look on her face like she hadn’t been the one to fall into the hot oil, but was watching someone else take a dive. “Oh, my God.”

If she said “oh, my God” one more time, Kendra thought she might scream. Even Ethan had stopped his bouncing. His hand linked through Mom’s fingers as he looked up at her, then at the manager. Kendra moved closer, too. It was crazy, like she and Ethan could somehow protect her. Kendra didn’t even know against what. Against something, though.

The manager’s face split in a wide smile that tried to be friendly but came off grotesque. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know my mother,” Mom said in the voice that would’ve made Kendra or even Ethan stop talking. Even Daddy would’ve changed the subject. Mom didn’t get angry often, but when she did...

“You didn’t know your mother?” The manager’s voice carried.

Nobody was even pretending not to stare now.

“No. I never knew her.” Mom gave the cashier a pointed look. “My change?”

“Oh, sure.” He fumbled with the drawer.

Mom took the couple dollars in change from the cashier and tucked them into her wallet, then gave Ethan and Kendra each a quarter from the coins before dumping the others loose into her purse. She always did that, and somehow that made all of this all right. It was normal, even if none of the rest of this was. Kendra clutched the coin in her fist, even though a quarter had long ago stopped being exciting. She rubbed the edge of it with her thumb. She didn’t want her burger or shake anymore.

The drama hadn’t ended. The stupid manager wouldn’t quit. She heaved herself forward to lean on the counter. “You back in town? You in that house, huh? Ollie Barrett told us about you but I have to say, nobody believed it.”

Mom nodded, her expression giving away nothing. She’d gone blank and far away. Kendra had never seen that face on her mother before. Anger, annoyance, boredom, polite disinterest. But never this blankness.

It scared her.

The manager laughed and looked over Kendra and Ethan. “And these are yours? Wow. Well, I guess you done all right for yourself. All things considered, I guess you were pretty lucky, then. I mean, nobody’d have thought, huh? I mean, Ellie had the baby right over there.” The manager pointed to the restroom doors. “Right in that ladies’ room! Can you believe it? And here you are, what, thirty-some years later? All growned up. Who’d have thunk it?”

Kendra blinked rapidly. Ethan had been following their mom so closely that when she stopped, he bumped her. Their drinks shifted on the tray she held, slopping over her mom’s hands and onto the floor. Kendra pulled up so short her sneakers squeaked on the dirty tile floor.

“Kiki, take this tray to a table, please. And grab some extra...extra...” Her mother drew in a breath, the only sign so far that she was at all upset. Her eyes darted back and forth, her face no longer blank. “Paper cloths. Paper hand wipers.”

“Napkins?” Ethan offered.

“Yes,” their mom bit out. Her voice sounded stilted and strained. It made Kendra’s stomach hurt worse. Ethan had backed up a step, his small face anxious. Kendra’s mind twisted the way her stomach had.

Her mom had been born in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant? What kind of fuckery was that?

“Nobody even knew she was pregnant,” the manager continued. “I heard she said she didn’t even know, but I want to know how anybody could possibly not be able to tell they’re pregnant?”

“Maybe she was so fat she couldn’t tell,” Kendra said so loudly the sound of her voice shocked herself. “I mean, you could be pregnant and nobody would be able to tell by looking at you.”

The noise of a dozen pairs of eyes rushing to fix themselves on any place but the manager was also the sound of Kendra’s mom’s sigh. “Kiki.”

Kendra lifted her chin, jaw tight. She’d crossed her arms over her chest at some point, like she was daring that bitch behind the counter to say anything. But the manager, like most bullies, didn’t. She looked shocked, then angry and then, finally and much too late, in Kendra’s opinion, ashamed. She didn’t say anything, though, just turned and waddled to the back of the kitchen.

The cashier let out a short, sharp snicker he quickly silenced when Kendra glared at him. Then he gave her an admiring, up-and-down glance that might’ve been flattering if he’d been cute—or she hadn’t just been a total bitch to a stranger in front of a restaurant full of hillbillies. She didn’t even smile at him, just turned to her mom and Ethan.

“Can we take that stuff to go?”

“Sure, honey.” Her mom sounded like her normal self again.

In the car, her mom turned the music up loud and they sang along with stupid summer songs by lame fake rocker chicks who thought lyrics about dental hygiene mixed with liquor made them sound badass. Ethan made up some words of his own, most of them rhyming with or talking about poop, which made their mom laugh so Kendra joined in. They ate their food and tossed the trash in the pail out in the yard before they started to unload the groceries instead of leaving the trash in the car the way they usually did—or even taking it in the house the way their mom usually told them to.

“Let’s not tell your dad we got fast food,” their mom said, too casually. “He’ll be mad we didn’t get him anything.”

“Okay,” Ethan said without a question.

Kendra nodded, too. But later, watching her mom in the kitchen as she stocked the cupboards with food they didn’t need and probably would never even eat before, please God, they went back to Philly, she wondered if her mom had another reason for not saying anything. Maybe her mom didn’t want her dad to know about what the manager had said. Kendra didn’t blame her.

She wished she didn’t know, either.